Non-profit hospital
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
A non-profit hospital is a hospital which is organized as a non-profit corporation. Based on their charitable purpose and usually affiliated with a religious denomination they are a traditional means of delivering medical care in the United States. In addition to public hospitals in larger cities and research hospitals affiliated with medical schools they were in the late twentieth century supplemented by competing investor-owned for-profit hospitals.
As charitable non-profit institutions they pay no taxes, but nevertheless seldom offer medical services to the indigent, indeed often charging the medically uninsured higher prices and aggressively collecting unpaid bills. Recently a few lawyers, have filed suit on behalf of indigent clients, but have generally been unsuccessful due to ruling by the Federal Courts that the question is a matter for the IRS, the indigent patients lacking standing.
References
- Adapted from the Wikinfo article: http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.php?title=Non-profit_hospital
- "Tax-Exempt Hospitals' Practices Challenged:46 Lawsuits Allege That Uninsured Pay the Most" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45531-2005Jan28.html) article by Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, January 29, 2005
