The Catholic Hospital Association isn't a Johnny-come-lately to reporting community benefits.
The not-for-profit organization first did work on the concept in the 1980s, publishing its Social Accountability Budget in 1989.
Congress was asking similar questions then to those being asked of healthcare organizations today, said Julie Trocchio, senior director of community benefit and continuing care for the CHA.
"It's also a time when states were looking at tax exemptions and trying to determine if not-for-profit organizations were doing enough," she said.
The Social Accountability Budget was recently revised by the organization to take into account recent initiatives by Catholic hospitals to provide service to their communities.
"We developed a comprehensive list of community benefits. It's a list for hospitals to know what to count and what not to count," she said. "We worked with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, accounting groups and others to develop specific accounting principles."
The most visible outworking of the initiative exists on the CHA's Web site, which includes a downloadable form that is available to any organization. The form can be filled out and submitted with Form 990 from the Internal Revenue Service, intended to give not-for-profit organizations a way to report on finances.
Because the IRS is requesting electronic submissions, the CHA provides a way to comprehensively submit community benefit data, Trocchio said.
Other hospital organizations are interested in the CHA's methodology and form as well. Trocchio has visited hospital associations in Georgia and New Jersey and says Voluntary Hospitals of America, an Irving, Texas-based national alliance of hospitals and health systems, has expressed interest.
The American Hospital Association, recently castigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), also supports the CHA's work, though it has taken a policy approach that includes bad debt and government payer shortfalls in calculations for community benefit.
"We hope a lot of organizations report their community benefit on the form," Trocchio said. "We hope to see better community benefit programs as a result."