Minnesota Nonprofit Hospitals Celebrate Legislative Audit Report on Community Benefit
Nonprofit hospitals in the Land of 10,000 Lakes are saying “I told you so!” after a legislative audit concluded that they provide more in community benefits than they receive in tax breaks. Minnesota stakeholders, like those in Indiana and other places, have been complaining for some time that Minnesota nonprofit hospitals aren’t deserving of the tax and other benefits that come with nonprofit status. So lawmakers ordered up an audit on just how much community benefit Minnesota nonprofit hospitals provide. Here is a summary from the Minnesota Reformer:
Minnesota’s 104 nonprofit general hospitals appear to give back more to their communities than they receive in tax breaks, although it depends on what is counted as a community benefit, and with the caveat that tax benefits are difficult to estimate. That’s the squishy assessment the Office of the Legislative Auditor delivered in a report on Wednesday to state lawmakers, who had ordered an evaluation of how nonprofit hospitals’ community benefit spending stack up against the sizable tax breaks they receive.
The Minnesota Nurses Association, the union representing some 22,000 nurses, was a vocal proponent of the analysis in its push for more stringent regulations on hospitals’ community spending. The union frequently accuses hospitals of acting like profit-seeking corporations, and argued Minnesotans deserved an accounting of how health systems are justifying their tax-exempt status while closing units, blacklisting patients with medical debt, suing patients that were eligible for charity care and rewarding executives with massive salaries. The Minnesota Hospital Association celebrated the report’s findings, saying it “confirms what we’ve known all along: Not only are non-profit hospitals fulfilling their charitable missions, but they’re also going above and beyond.”
The entire report is available here. The first page of the executive summary is pasted below.
darryll k. jones