IHA has released results from its latest hospital community benefit survey, which show Iowa hospitals provided a total of $1.2 billion in community benefit.  Community benefits are activities designed to improve health status and provide greater access to health care.  Along with uncompensated care (which is made up of both charity care and bad debt), community benefits include such services and programs as health screenings, support groups, counseling, immunizations, nutritional services and transportation programs. 

IHA also includes hospital losses to Medicare and Medicaid in its community benefit report.  This is because those losses – more than $310 million in 2009 – impact the hospitals’ ability to provide community benefit. 

Providing community benefits is an essential mission of non-profit community hospitals (117 of Iowa’s 118 hospitals are non-profit) and it is also required under federal laws that cover these hospitals’ tax-exempt status.  However, those laws do not specify an “amount” of community benefit from each hospital. 

Instead, hospitals are given the flexibility to determine how to meet the specific needs of their individual communities through these programs and services.  IHA believes that flexibility is important because community needs vary, not only from hospital to hospital and community to community, but from year to year – even from month to month.  A one-size-fits-all approach to community benefit would negate that flexibility and undermine the ability of hospital boards, administrators and employees to react to community needs in a timely fashion – if at all. 

In the coming weeks, IHA will be sharing more about the unique programs and services Iowa hospitals provide to their communities.

The current heat spell underscores the value of hospitals as 24/7 assets to their communities.  As temperatures have risen, hospitals all over Iowa have sent forth the message:  come here for a cool place to relax and enjoy all the water you need.

There are people in your community who are at the mercy of the weather every day, perhaps because they have no air conditioning – perhaps because they have no home at all.  Meanwhile, most of us take our comfort and hydration for granted, both at our workplaces and in our homes.  But what if your air conditioning goes out?  What if you lose power for an extended period of time, starting at 1 a.m.?  What if a water main break leaves you high and dry?

Then your hospital is there for you and your neighbors.

Sure, you might have other options.  You can hang out at the library or wander the mall.  But eventually the library and the mall are going to close.

Hospitals are always available to their community

Your hospital is always there, come hellish temperatures or – as we found out about this time last year – high water.  And what’s more, if the heat has taken an unexpected toll on you and you’re not feeling quite right, your hospital is ready for that, too.

That’s the thing about hospitals:  If there is a way to care, a way to do more that makes a community healthier and safer, then your hospital is probably doing it.  And they are doing it all day, every day.

For tips on keeping kids safe in the summer heat, see this bulletin from St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids.

[Image courtesy of Sister72 on Flickr]