Hospital Community Benefit

The bill makes changes to the hospital community benefit and imposes certain requirements on the public presentation of each hospital's community implementation plan. The bill requires each reporting hospital to:

• Invite the general public to attend the reporting hospital's annual meeting by posting the invitation on the reporting hospital's website and social media accounts and distributing the invitation through the reporting hospital's electronic newsletter or e-mail lists, or in any other way that the reporting hospital regularly communicates with the community it serves, at least 30 days before the meeting is scheduled to take place;
• Present to the community during each annual presentation the reporting hospital's community benefit activities from the previous year;
• Solicit feedback from the community during each annual presentation of its proposed community benefit implementation plan for the following year;
• Submit a report that details who attended the public meeting, the topics discussed at the meeting, and any decisions made as a result of the discussion;
• Make the report available to the public; and
• Complete a community benefit implementation plan that addresses the needs described in the reporting hospital's community health needs assessment and includes an explanation of the community served by the hospital.

The bill requires the state medical services board to promulgate rules governing the accessibility standards for the public meetings and to implement best practices to ensure public engagement from a diverse range of populations.

The bill requires the department of health care policy and financing (state department) to:

• Conduct a stakeholder meeting with members of community organizations and advocates to determine best practices to ensure input from local community members is incorporated into the data used to determine community priorities as well as best practices for hospitals to collaborate with local public health agencies and community organizations to reduce redundant community needs assessments.
• Include in its annual report a summary of the estimated federal, and state, and local tax exemptions made received by each hospital; and
• Establish a minimum annual community investment target based on certain calculation standards; and
• Set requirements for compliance and allow the state department to take remedial action if a hospital fails to comply with the hospital community benefit requirements. Such remedial action includes weekly fines for each violation .

The bill requires a reporting hospital to expend the amount fined on community benefit investment priorities described in the reporting hospital's current community benefit implementation plan. The reporting hospital must include information on how the money from fines was expended in the reporting hospital's annual report submitted to the state department.

(Note: Italicized words indicate new material added to the original summary; dashes through words indicate deletions from the original summary.)

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)