Late News: Disclosure requirements for charity care flawed, AHA says

The American Hospital Association says new requirements on reporting of charity care and community benefits provided by hospitals in exchange for tax breaks are flawed and unfair to health systems and urged the Internal Revenue Service to revise its disclosure rules. Hospitals must report charity-care and community-benefit spending for the first time on 2009 tax forms known as the Form 990 Schedule H. In a letter to the IRS, the AHA said, among other things, that research commissioned by the trade group found the reporting will exclude charity and community benefit subsidies from one hospital to another in systems with hospitals that file separate Schedule H forms. Under the Schedule H, hospitals with separate employer identification numbers must report separately. Any benefits provided by corporate system headquarters that do not share an employer identification number with hospitals will also be omitted from the reporting. Urban Institute researchers conducted 12 health system interviews and 76 online surveys of health systems with three or more tax-exempt hospitals.

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