For years debate has raged over what non-profit hospitals must do to retain that non-profit status. That debate has gone from a general concept of what constitutes “community benefit” to local government challenges to the non-profit status of hospitals based on the general notion that they were not providing enough community benefits to merit the special tax status.

The debate was raised to a new level in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act established, for the first time, national standards detailing what hospitals must do to retain their tax-exempt status.

In a new issue brief, the journal Health Affairs takes a closer look at community benefit and the Affordable Care Act: the conditions that led to a desire to address community benefit in the 2010 reform law, the issues that define the debate, what the reform law requires, and how the law’s requirements may be policed and enforced.

Many private safety-net hospitals are non-profit.

Find the Health Affairs issue brief “Nonprofit Hospitals’ Community Benefit Requirements” here.