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Hospital Tax-Exempt Policy: A Comparison Of Schedule H And State Community Benefit Reporting Systems, Sara Rosenbaum, Maureen Byrnes, Amber M. Rieke

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) revises federal tax exemption standards for nonprofit hospitals by clarifying and augmenting their community benefit obligations. The ACA amendments followed the 2009 launch of Schedule H – the form on which hospital community benefit, financial, and institutional activities are reported and which must be appended to each facility’s annual Form 990 nonprofit institution information return. Schedule H effectively creates a nationwide, standardized, facility-specific, transparent, and fully publicly accessible reporting system covering the nation’s more than 2,900 nonprofit hospitals. Schedule H delineates financial assistance and bad debt, and requires identification of community health …