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What is Community Benefit Insight's purpose?

Tax-exempt hospitals and communities are undertaking collaborative planning activities through community health needs assessments (CHNAs) and the development of corresponding Implementation Strategies that respond to identified and prioritized needs. CBI is intended to complement these efforts by providing better access to the community benefit financial reporting data tax-exempt hospitals provide to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) each year.

The Community Benefit Insight web site is the first tool to provide data to the public on non-profit hospital community benefit spending. Traditionally, these activities have included free and reduced-cost care, health screenings, and health education, but they may also include the following:

You can discover what activities are happening locally or nationally and compare spending across hospitals with this online resource.

Community Benefit Insight was developed by RTI International and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University through the generous support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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What data are included?

Community Benefit Insight includes community benefit expenditures as reported by 501(c)(3) tax-exempt hospitals on their tax form, IRS 990 Schedule H, for years 2010 through 2020 from all fifty states and the District of Columbia. The web tool content is drawn from both governmental and hospital sources including the IRS Form 990 and Schedule H, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). We have also included information from other governmental sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, which is designed to enable comparisons of the communities in which hospitals are located, on measures such as health insurance status and poverty.

Does Community Benefit Insight contain information on Community Health Needs Assessments?

Since 2012, tax-exempt hospitals have been required to report on how they carry out their community health needs assessments (CHNA), including the planning process used, and the means by which the CHNA is made available to the public (prior to the 2012, this information was optional). Non-profit hospitals now report on whether the facility has adopted and executed its Implementation Strategy, which is the community benefit plan developed to respond to the community needs identified in the CHNA process. A CHNA is now required every three years. The CHNA process must include community input, including input from persons with expertise in public health.