By Gary Cohen
Published April 30, 2014
Health & Environmental Funders Network

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers our country the opportunity to transform a healthcare system that has focused on sickness to one that prioritizes health. Under the ACA, non-profit hospitals are required to conduct community health needs assessments every three years and align their community benefit expenditures with community health priorities. 

This is not a small thing. Last year, hospitals reported spending $13 billion on community benefit, with the lion’s share going toward charity care and discounted Medicaid expenses. As more and more people sign up and receive healthcare, the percentage of charity care is likely to go down, freeing up funds for programmatic investments that support community health. Moreover, since one of the pillars of ACA is to address population health, for the first time hospitals are being challenged to look beyond the four walls of their facilities and understand what is happening in the communities they serve.

These changes in healthcare policy create an opening to achieve three fundamental objectives that will have cascading benefits for the country as a whole:

• Create an opportunity for community-based organizations to partner with local hospitals on neighborhood health issues.
• Move upstream and address the environmental and social factors that make people sick.
• Heal the separation between public health and healthcare delivery.

Continue reading complete article, with an introduction from Chris Kabel, at the Health & Environmental Funders Network