Do the right thing. When it comes to your community, do you know what that is? Roundtable discussion

What is the health care organization's responsibility to maintaining a healthy community, and how does the board fit into that role? Has the field's understandable fixation on costs and the penetration of managed care into most markets affected that role? Leaders of both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations often believe that they are fulfilling their community obligations as long as they provide uncompensated care to the indigent and the uninsured. But is that really being accountable to the community? And if it's not, then what is community accountability? The American Hospital Association's Division of Trustee Leadership and Trustee magazine posed these questions to 13 health care and community leaders last December. Their different perspectives provide for some surprising answers.