Results from 2020 Tax-Exempt Hospitals' Schedule H Community Benefits Report
AHA
Every hospital and health system’s mission is to always care for their patients and communities. Even during a once-in-a-century pandemic, hospitals continued to provide a comprehensive range of benefits, programs and essential services. Tax-exempt hospitals provided nearly $130 billion in total benefits to their communities in 2020 alone — the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available. This new report demonstrates that hospitals never retrenched during the pandemic, and, in fact, the amount of community benefit exceeded prior years by nearly $20 billion.
In addition to providing financial assistance to those in need, hospitals and health systems’ community benefit activities include programs and services that are responsive and designed to meet the current and future health needs of the specific communities they serve. They tailor programs aimed at keeping their communities healthy and productive, helping with housing, accessing healthy food, health education, health screenings, transportation, vaccination clinics and other programs to address the needs that affect their community’s health and well-being.