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Non-For Profit Organizations

Executive SummaryNonprofit organizations have historically
played, and continue to play, a critical role in the financing and delivery of health care services in the United States.• About 60 percent of community hospitals are nonprofit, all community
health centers are nonprofit, almost 30 percent of nursing homes are nonprofit, and about 17 percent of home health care agencies are estimated to be nonprofit. Nonprofit health plans are estimated to serve over 40 percent or more of all private health insurance enrollees.• The nonprofit sector is where we go for solving our most troubling social problems. It is where we go to protect
our values and culture. The nonprofit sector is society’s safety net.• Nonprofit health care organizations are primarily responsible and accountable to the communities
and populations they serve. They
are legally and ethically bound to “do good” for the benefit of their communities. Their governing bodies are comprised of leaders from the communities they serve. Rather than inuring to the benefit
of private owners, the earnings and reserves of nonprofit health care organizations are reinvested to benefit the community.TheValueHealth Care of Nonprofit
2The preponderance of studies document that nonprofit health care organizations provide significantly more “community benefits” than their for-profit health counterparts. While not always “counted” as a community benefit, research has also shown that nonprofit health care organizations are less likely to abandon services or products—or to withdraw from markets—that have declining profitability.Setting aside community benefits, conceptually one would expect nonprofit and for-profit health care organizations to be performing in other ways that are indistinguishable from one another—financing and/or delivering care in compassionate,
safe, quality, ethical and efficient manners. Even on many
of these dimensions, however, studies indicate that nonprofit health care organizations as a...