Provision Would Require Nonprofit Hospitals to Put Financial-Assistance Policies in Place

Nonprofit hospitals would be required to conduct “a community health needs assessment” at least once every three years and take other steps under the terms of a health-care bill under review by the Senate Finance Committee.

However, the measure the committee was working on last week does not require that nonprofit hospitals provide a minimum annual level of charitable patient care, an idea that had been floated in May by the two top members of the committee: Sens. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the committee, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican.

The provision considered by the finance committee would require hospitals “to adopt, implement, and widely publicize” written financial-assistance policies.

In addition, hospitals would have to “bill patients who qualify for financial assistance no more than the amount generally billed” to patients who are insured.

Hospitals would not be allowed under the legislation to undertake “extraordinary collection actions” against patients without having made reasonable attempts to inform them of the medical centers’ financial-assistance policies.

The bill would require the secretary of the Treasury and the secretary of health and human services “to annually report to Congress the levels of charity care, bad debt, expenses, unreimbursed costs of means-tested government programs, and unreimbursed costs of non-means-tested government programs incurred by private tax-exempt, taxable, and government hospitals as well as the cost of community-benefit activities incurred by private tax-exempt hospitals.”

The IRS currently uses what is known as a community-benefit standard to determine a hospital’s eligibility for nonprofit status.

To read the provisions of the measure under consideration by by the Senate Finance Committee, go to: http://finance.senate.gov/index.html.