California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has ordered Mission Community Hospital in Panorama City, Calif.; Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, Calif.; and University of Southern California Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale, Calif., to pay local nonprofits millions of dollars to meet the state's charity care rules, according to California Healthline.
To qualify for tax breaks, nonprofit hospitals are required by federal law to provide a certain amount of care for free or at a discounted cost to patients who are unable to pay for treatment. In California, state law allows the attorney general to set specific charity care requirements when a nonprofit hospital gets a new owner.
Earlier this year, the three hospitals requested the attorney general reduce their charity care requirements. The hospitals argued a drop in California's uninsured population has reduced the need for charity care. California's uninsured rate fell from 17 percent in 2013 to 6.8 percent in 2017.
Mr. Becerra's office denied the hospitals' requests on April 13. As a result, Mission Community Hospital was ordered to pay about $1.7 million to at least one local nonprofit organization providing medical services for low-income and homeless residents for not meeting its fiscal year 2016 charity care requirement. Emanuel Medical Center and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital were ordered to donate $1.9 million and $1.7 million, respectively, to local nonprofit medical services providers to cover their past-due charity care payments, according to the report.
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