Health systems across the U.S. made Lown Institute's new rankings lists for organizations where charity care and community investment spending was less or more than the value of their tax exemption.
The rankings, released April 12 by the nonpartisan healthcare think tank, examine meaningful community benefit spending for nonprofit hospital systems nationwide.
For the rankings, researchers calculated fair share spending for more than 1,800 hospitals across 275 nonprofit hospital systems based on hospital tax filings from fiscal year ending 2018 or 2019, whichever was the most recent year available.
Each system's spending on charity care and community investment was compared to the value of its tax exemption. Systems were considered to have a fair share deficit if their spending on charity care and community investment was less than the value of their tax exemption. They were considered to have a fair share surplus if their spending on charity care and community investment exceeded the value of their tax exemption. More information about the rankings is available here.
The 10 private nonprofit hospital systems with the largest fair share deficits, as ranked by the Lown Institute:
1. Providence St. Joseph Health, now known as Providence: $705 million
2. Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.): $671 million
3. Mass General Brigham (Boston): $625 million
4. Cleveland Clinic: $611 million
5. UPMC (Pittsburgh): $601 million
6. University of Pennsylvania Health System (Philadelphia): $571 million
7. Catholic Health Initiatives (Englewood, Colo.), now part of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health: $515 million
8. Advocate Aurora Health (Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Ill.): $498 million
9. Dignity Health (San Francisco), now part of CommonSpirit: $456 million
10. Ascension Health (St. Louis): $388 million
The 10 private nonprofit hospital systems with the largest fair share surpluses, as ranked by the Lown Institute:
1. Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston): $147 million
2. Wellstar Health System (Marietta, Ga.): $144 million
3. Nebraska Medical Center (Omaha): $108 million
4. Christus Health (Irving, Texas): $93 million
5. Houston Methodist: $80 million
6. Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.): $74 million
7. Baptist Memorial Health Care (Memphis, Tenn.): $64 million
8. UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.): $62 million
9. Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health System: $56 million
10. Methodist Health System (Dallas): $53 million