Community Benefit: Building a Sustainable Infrastructure

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Community Benefit Building a Sustainable
Infrastructure
945 am session
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What is Community Benefit?

• Charity care
• Government-sponsored indigent health care
  unpaid costs of (means tested) public programs
• Medicaid
• State Childrens Health Insurance Program
• Medically indigent programs
• Community Benefit Services (A G)

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What is Community Benefit?
Community benefit programs and services provide
treatment or promote health and healing. A true
community benefit is provided to address a real
community need, not for marketing purposes, and
meets at least one of the following criteria
Provides a service or program that would likely
be discontinued or would need to be provided by
another not-for-profit or government provider if
the decision were made on a purely financial
basis
Involves education or research that improves
overall community health
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Community Benefit Process

• Community benefit is a planned, managed,
  organized, and measured approach to a health
  care organizations participation in meeting
  identified community health needs.
• It implies collaboration with a community to
  benefit its residents particularly the poor,
  minorities, and other underserved groups by
  improving health status and quality of life.

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Basic Steps in Community Benefit Planning and
Implementation
Determining What Counts
Building a Sustainable Infrastructure
Interrelated Interdependent Simultaneous
Accounting For Costs
Planning
Evaluating
Communicating
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Basic Steps in Community Benefit Planning and
Implementation
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Sustainable Infrastructure

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Renew Commitment

• Guidelines
• Use your mission and values
• Integrate community benefit into key
  organizational plans
• Hold leaders accountable
• Get the culture right

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Mission Values
Integrate into Organizations Strategic Plan
Board Community Benefit Standards
Renew Commitment
Consumer Information
Standing Board Meeting Agenda Item
Market Research
Internal Community Benefit Education
Performance Reviews
Hiring Criteria
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Build Basic Structures

• Guidelines
• Commit staff to community benefits
• Form a community benefit internal workgroup
• Budget for community benefits
• Establish policies that support community
  benefits
• Collaborate with community partners

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CEO THE Community Benefit Champion
Board of Trustees Oversight
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Community Benefit Point Person

• Qualifications
• Preferably full-time
• Key responsibility not other duties as
  assigned
• Senior level
• Planning and budgeting authority
• Direct access to CEO
• Clout to get things done
• Collaborative work style, with the community and
  within the organization
• Understands community benefit

• Locations
• Community Benefit
• Community Partnerships
• Mission
• Finance
• Planning
• Community Relations
• Quality Performance
• Marketing
• Public Relations
• ?

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Community Benefit Internal Workgroup

• Representatives from
• Community benefit point person
• Finance
• Communications
• Planning
• Board
• Community
• Advocacy/government relations
• Patient care
• Whos missing?

• Functions
• Define community
• Community need and asset assessment
• Community input
• Prioritizing needs
• Community benefit plan
• Budget
• Data collection
• Community benefit reporting

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Community Benefit Budget

• Consider
• Responsiveness to health needs in your community
• Expected trend in community poverty rates,
  unemployment, insurance coverage
• Other providers in the community how do you
  compare?
• Available organization revenues
• Historical trends in community benefit costs
  including charity care
• Tax exemption value
• Your or other states requirements

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Policies Review and Update

• Physician involvement
• Employee policies
• Advocacy policies
• Environmental responsibility policies

• Charity care
• Bad debt
• Billing and collection
• Travel and education
• Conflicts of interest/vendors
• Executive compensation

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Community Partners
Whos missing? What needs to be repaired?
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Community Benefit StructureHoly Cross Hospital
Silver Spring, MD
1 including physician development 2 including
information systems 3 including nursing
excellence Committee oversees overall strategic
planning and community benefit