Following the decision by Illinois Department of Revenue last week to reject three hospitals from property tax exemptions, hospitals are clamoring over the need for nonprofit status.
For instance, Stephen A. Ralph, CEO and president of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., said in a Hospital Impact blog post, "Not-for-profit hospitals are the backbone of our nation's healthcare system. They were founded with the inherent mission of ensuring care and access to everyone and always operating with the community's best interest in mind. To help ensure this, not-for-profits enjoy tax-exemption status," he said, citing that his institution invested $91 million back into the community in 2010 alone.
He cautioned against developing new metrics for demonstrating community benefit and not-for-profit status. Doing so would threaten to revoke tax exemptions of hospitals that "continue to provide critically important, yet money-draining, services that would otherwise be absent from the community," such as trauma care, geriatric psychiatric services, or pediatric care, notes Ralph. --Read the full blog post on Hospital Impact.