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January 23, 2008

Ohio Takes New Look at Nonprofit Hospitals

Ohio’s Attorney General, Marc Dann, is beginning an investigation into whether the state’s 174 nonprofit hospitals can justify their tax-exempt status, reports The Columbus Dispatch. While a previous effort failed due to criticism from hospital leaders and other nonprofit organizations, Mr. Dann believes that a more collaborative approach this time will help assure his success.

“Anytime you start to hold people accountable who have not had that for decades, if not centuries, people are going to start to be nervous,” Mr. Dann said. He took the first steps toward working with relevant nonprofit groups last week by discussing his ideas with the board of the Ohio Hospital Association, which represents the nonprofit hospitals.

A hospital-association spokeswoman, Tiffany Himmelreich, said that the group would “work hard with the attorney general’s staff to explain what community benefits the hospitals provide” but noted that the Internal Revenue Service was undertaking a similar effort to require more detailed financial accounting beginning in 2009. Ms. Himmelreich said the association hopes Mr. Dann’s efforts won’t duplicate the IRS’s work.

Among Mr. Dann’s goals are to investigate how much nonprofit hospitals pay their executives, how they collect unpaid medical bills, how much charity care they provide, and how much financial information they disclose to the public.

Wednesday January 23, 2008 | Permalink

Comments

1. Most nonprofit hospitals have a nonprofit corporate structure but are hardly philanthropic organizations. The tremendous amount of money that flows through nonprofit hospitals and the attitude of most executives makes them basically indistinguishable from their commercial hospital counterparts.

   — Philanthro Joe    Jan 23, 02:30 PM    #

2. Finally Ohio will begin to hold nonprofit organizations accountable for their nonprofit status. Mr. Dann ought to next look into the the many private colleges and universities in Ohio that enjoy that nonprofit status and believe it or not, The Salvation Army…which is a huge and corporate nonprofit organization if there ever was one. The Majors of each corps now live in beautiful big homes all paid for and have three and four cars, it is as if they have a powerful union which has held the national offices at bay…all they have to do is built programs for the poor with their corps budget and then steal money from those budgets funding those programs, the national Salvation Army doesn’t know what is going on in Ohio…what a sad day it is for those donors who give so freely to The Salvation Army…what would they do if they knew the truth.

   — Mark    Jan 24, 03:33 PM    #

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