Community Benefit Definition

What is community benefit?

Sutter Health and many other health care systems around the country voluntarily subscribe to a common definition of community benefit developed by the Catholic Health Association.

Community benefits are programs or activities that provide treatment and/or promote health and healing as a response to community needs; they are not provided for marketing purposes.

Community benefit:

• Generates a low or negative financial return
  
• Responds to needs of special populations such as persons living in poverty and other disenfranchised persons
  
• Supplies services or programs that would likely be discontinued – or would need to be provided by another not-for-profit or government provider – if the decision was made on a purely financial basis
  
• Responds to public health needs
  
• Involves education or research that improves overall community health