Promoting accountability: hospital charity care in California, Washington state, and Texas

Debate as to whether private hospitals meet their charitable obligations is heated. This study examines how alternative state approaches for ensuring hospital accountability to the community affects charitable expenditures and potentially affects access to care for the uninsured. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were used to compare private California hospitals' charity care expenditures with those of hospitals in Texas and Washington state. The key finding from this study is that net of hospital characteristics, market characteristics and community need, Texas hospitals were estimated to provide over 3 times more charity care and Washington hospitals were estimated to provide 66% more charity care than California hospitals. This finding suggests that more prescriptive community benefit or charity care requirements may be necessary to ensure that private hospitals assume a larger role in the care of the uninsured.