Amid a decades-long consensus that safety-net hospitals are deserving of special federal support but a long-time struggle to identify what exactly constitutes a “safety-net hospital,” the Alliance of Safety-Net Hospitals is asking members of the House of Representatives to support H.R. 7145, a bill that would establish a federal definition of safety-net hospitals.

Noting that mission-driven community safety-net hospitals care for hard-working, low-income Americans who face serious economic, geographic, and systemic barriers to care, ASH and health care advocates, including members of Congress, are pursuing the development of a data-driven, objective definition of “safety-net hospital” that avoids the pitfalls of previous attempts to develop such a definition and would provide a vital first step toward lending a much-needed helping hand to hospitals that suffer from chronic underpayment by government programs – underpayment that leaves them short of doctors, short of updated facilities, and short of the resources they need to serve their communities.

With this need in mind, ASH has written to House members asking them to support H.R. 7145, laying out the case for their support in the paper “The Critical Need to Define ‘Safety-Net Hospitals.’” Find that policy brief here and find H.R. 1745 here.