The American Hospital Association said a report from the Lown Institute on nonprofit hospitals’ charity care and community benefit spending “is wrong and cannot be taken seriously,” Becker’s reports.
Nonpartisan healthcare think tank Lown Institute released its Fair Share Spending report April 11. It found that out of 1,773 nonprofit hospitals evaluated, 77 percent spent less on charity care and community investment than the estimated value of their tax breaks, which the institute calls a “fair share” deficit.
AHA General Counsel and Secretary Melinda Hatton defended hospitals’ commitment to their communities and criticized the Lown Institute’s report.
“The Lown Institute’s latest report on hospital community benefits, like the previous one, is wrong and cannot be taken seriously as it once again relies on obvious biases and suffers from serious methodological flaws,” Ms. Hatton wrote. She contends the institute’s report cherry-picks how it measures community investment and ignores challenges hospitals and health systems faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, among other “blatant issues.” Read more.
