A Nonprofit Hospital Fights To Win Back Charitable Halo | WSJ | 6.29.04
In a case that could redefine what it means to be a charitable hospital, not-for-profit hospitals across the U.S. are watching as a big Catholic facility in Illinois fights to regain its local property-tax exemption amid questions about financial treatment of the uninsured, including aggressive debt-collection tactics. …
Indeed, amid calls to make not-for-profit hospitals — which make up 82% of all U.S. hospitals — more accountable for the tax breaks they enjoy, there is growing uncertainty about just what qualifies a hospital as a tax-exempt charitable institution. …
Last week, at least one congressional hearing shed some light on hospitals’ treatment of uninsured patients and allegations that they are often overbilled. Richard Scruggs, the well-known tobacco lawyer, has helped engineer and coordinate lawsuits filed in recent weeks against 18 not-for-profit hospital systems — including Provena and its parent company, Provena Health — seeking class-action status. The suits allege that hospitals that charge uninsured patients the highest rates for care, hound patients for debts and benefit from profit-making businesses within their walls shouldn’t be permitted to call themselves charities and avoid taxation. …
Some hospitals may have invited the scrutiny, suggests Richard Wade, a senior spokesman for the AHA. “If you act like a corporation, you get treated like one — and you know the public doesn’t like big corporations.” …
This is beginning to look like a whole area of healthcare just waiting to be regulated—are we seeing the harbinger of the next HIPAA? Will this become a creature of compliance?