Amid an ongoing, six-year legal fight over nonprofit hospital transparency, Georgia lawmakers are taking up the issue — calling for mandated charity care levels and disclosures of tax exemptions and executive salaries, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In December, 26 House representatives issued a report calling for greater transparency, including a provision that would require hospital authority-owned hospitals to comply with open-records requests, according to the report. Many hospitals in Georgia were founded as public hospitals and were originally operated by a county hospital authority. Authorities created nonprofits and leased hospital operations back to the nonprofit organizations as the industry became more complex.
The aim of the proposal is to ensure nonprofit hospitals are sharing the burden of providing uncompensated care.
"The thing is, 95 to 99 percent of the hospitals are doing the community benefits and are doing exactly what they should be doing," Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "But there are a few that are either not fulfilling the mission or they're doing it in a way that it was never intended for it to be."
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