(a) The Department of Healthcare Access and Information may impose a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) on hospitals for failure to adopt, update, or submit community benefit plans consistent with Section 127350.

(b) The department may grant a hospital an automatic 60-day extension for submitting annual community benefit plans.

Terms Used In California Health and Safety Code 127346

  • Charity: An agency, institution, or organization in existence and operating for the benefit of an indefinite number of persons and conducted for educational, religious, scientific, medical, or other beneficent purposes.
  • Community: means the service areas or patient populations for which the hospital provides health care services. See California Health and Safety Code 127345
  • community benefit: means a hospital's activities that are intended to address community needs and priorities primarily through disease prevention and improvement of health status, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

    California Health and Safety Code 127345

  • department: means State Department of Health Services. See California Health and Safety Code 20
  • Hospital: means a private not-for-profit acute hospital licensed under subdivision (a), (b), or (f) of Section 1250 and is owned by a corporation that has been determined to be exempt from taxation under the United States Internal Revenue Code. See California Health and Safety Code 127345

(c) The department shall annually prepare, and post on its internet website, a report that includes all of the following:

(1) The amount each hospital spent on community benefits.

(2) The amount of community benefit spending attributable to charity care, the unpaid cost of government-sponsored health care programs, and community benefit programs and activities.

(3) A list of all hospitals that failed to report community benefits spending.

(d) The department shall make all community benefit plans submitted by hospitals pursuant to Section 127350 available to the public on its internet website.

(Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 143, Sec. 80. (AB 133) Effective July 27, 2021.)

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