Hospital-physician joint ventures: new, menacing IRS stance

To summarize, legitimate joint ventures between hospitals and members of their medical staffs to improve and increase the health care services and facilities available to the community are still possible without jeopardizing exemption. However, in joint ventures, and ultimately, in most other hospital-physician relationships, any time financial benefits are to be conferred upon physicians by the exempt hospital in which they practice, the hospital must be able to justify those benefits on the basis of benefits flowing directly to the community, and not indirectly through the increased referrals and admissions that the hospital expects to obtain.