Nonprofit hospitals are required to provide community benefit programs to maintain their tax-exempt status. Recent changes to community benefit regulations require hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments (CHNAs) every three years and to develop implementation strategies to address significant health needs in their communities.
To identify the community benefit lead at your facility, a good first step is to obtain your hospital’s CHNA, implementation strategy, or community benefit report. These are likely to be posted on the hospital’s website. Often a contact will be listed at the beginning or the end of these documents that is either the community benefit director or manager or an individual that can put you in contact with the most appropriate community benefit professional.
While some hospitals have an established community benefit department, it is fairly common for community benefit functions to be incorporated into other areas of the hospital. In a 2016 survey of community benefit directors, respondents reported that community benefit functions also occur in other hospital offices. You may be able to identify your facility’s community benefit director by reaching out to these departments:
- Public relations/marketing/outreach
- Communications
- Community or population health
- Community education/prevention
- Mission/advocacy
- Government and external affairs
- Finance/accounting
- Social services
- Foundation
Delivering community benefit
Connecting dots between healthy food programming and community benefit
