Community Health Improvement
- Advancing the physical, social and economic health of our communities

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Not-for-profit health care organizations demonstrate their commitment to community service through organized and sustainable community benefit programs providing:

Free and discounted care to those unable to afford health care.
Care to low-income beneficiaries of Medicaid and other indigent care programs.
Services designed to improve community health and increase access to health care.

Community benefit is also the basis of the tax-exemption of not-for-profit hospitals. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in its Revenue Ruling 69–545, describes the community benefit standard for charitable tax-exempt hospitals. Since 2008, tax-exempt hospitals have been required to report their community benefit and other information related to tax-exemption on the IRS Form 990 Schedule H.

The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, added new requirements for tax-exempt hospitals regarding:

Community health needs assessment and planning.
Financial assistance.
Charges.
Billing and collections.

Community benefit planning

What are community benefits?

Community benefits are programs or activities that provide treatment and/or promote health and healing as a response to identified community needs. They increase access to health care and improve community health.
A community benefit must respond to an identified community need and meet at least one of the following criteria:

Improve access to health care services.
Enhance health of the community.
Advance medical or health knowledge.
Relieve or reduce the burden of government or other community efforts.

How do health care organizations provide community benefits?

Health care organizations implement a comprehensive framework for planning, delivering and reporting their community benefit efforts. This framework includes the following elements:

Build a sustainable infrastructure — Create a culture that supports the organization's community benefit mission and put in place operational elements that sustain community benefit programs such as qualified staff, sufficient budgets, and supportive policies and procedures.
Plan for community benefit — Work with public health experts and community partners to assess and prioritize community health needs and develop programs based on goals, measurable outcomes and evidence-based interventions.
Account for community benefit — Adopt standardized principles and practices to account for community benefit and establish effective administrative and accounting processes to accurately account for and report community benefit to various stakeholders, including the IRS and state/local agencies.
Evaluate community benefit programs — Assess the quality and effectiveness of the overall program and individual programs and activities.
Tell the community benefit story — Report the organization's community benefit efforts as required to regulatory bodies (such as the IRS or state/local agencies) and to communities and other important constituencies such as hospital staff, physicians and donors.

St. Johns County Health Needs Assessment

St. Johns County Health Leadership Council

UF Health Flagler Hospital is a member of the St. Johns County Health Leadership Council, which is composed of over 30 community organizations in St. Johns County working together every three years to design and implement a county wide health needs assessment. We accomplish this through over the course of one year. St. Johns County health department is the host of many meeting, planning and implementation session over that time period. Throughout the year many focus groups and preliminary surveys are done at events and programs throughout the county culmination in one final county wide survey called "How Healthy is St. Johns County" the last assessment was done at the end of 2020, and is included in the link below.

We value your input on the Community Health Needs Assessment and Implementation Strategy. Please send your comments or questions to communityhealth@flaglerhealth.org.