Jackson County Memorial Hospital recently released its annual Community Benefit Report, highlighting expenditures targeted specifically for the community at large. The report details activities and projects that are over and above the hospital’s core mission of patient care.
To report its community benefits, JCMH, along with other hospitals across the country, uses a program titled Community Benefit Inventory for Social Accountability (CBISA) and accompanying federal guidelines developed to capture and report community benefit expenses.
The program divides community activities into three parts: seven community benefit categories, Financial Assistance to patients, and non-reimbursement amounts from Medicaid.
The seven Community Benefit categories are: Community Health Improvement Service, Health Professions Education, Subsidized Health Services, Research, Cash and In-Kind Contributions, Community-Building Activities, and Community Benefit Operations.
During the fiscal year of 2012, (July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012), Jackson County Memorial Hospital contributed a total of $3,760,589 in community benefit from the three parts listed above.
The largest benefit amounts were Financial Assistance totaling $1,574,074 and six of the seven Community Benefit Categories totaled $674,405 (excluding Research).
Two other categories that are financially significant but not considered reportable as a community benefit are the Unpaid Cost of Medicare, which is the difference between the amount Medicare paid the hospital compared to the cost of caring for Medicare patients, and the hospital’s Bad Debt, the cost of hospital services not collected from patients. These total an additional $4,060,897.
These amounts take up a significant portion of the hospital’s annual budget.
According to William G. Wilson, President and Chief Executive Officer, “Without total compensation for many of the services we provide, our mission is to deliver excellent patient care and customer service. Each year we know there is an amount of revenue that won’t be collected; even so, we continue caring for patients and as specific needs in the community are discovered, we do our best to help fulfill them.”
Jackson County Memorial Hospital has reported community benefit amounts annually for many years. The purpose of the report is to quantify the hospital’s outreach that goes beyond its core mission of inpatient and outpatient care.
As a sole community provider hospital (it is not part of a larger hospital system) JCMH seeks to partner with the communities it serves by appropriately using its resources to promote wellness and to educate patients and the public about healthcare related topics.
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