Question

What is Community Benefit? Why it’s important ?

Answer 1

The term “community benefit” refers to a type of public trust, which includes a wide range of public services (of health) and other health related activities offered by the not-for-profit hospitals and results in obtaining tax-exempt status for these hospitals. Community benefit programs are designed and carried out by organizations to provide some health care promotion. It is tied to nonprofit, charitable, tax exempt status for healthcare organizations because they are assumed to provide the healthcare services at low cost. These are very highly talked off but never explored keenly to find out a genuine need of some community benefit and also is never followed so keenly as the organizations follow their business activities. The reasons are simple to understand:

These are not for profit activities and do not generate positive revenues and are only expenses.

There may not be separate department or person responsible for this important activity and is assigned to a person to ensure execution within the budget and with minimum chargeable hours spent on it.

There may not have been a system and standard procedure to plan, execute and ensure a minimum number or amount of such community benefit activities every year.