A non-profit hospital is a hospital which is organized as a non-profit corporation. Based on their charitable purpose and usually affiliated with a religious denomination they are a traditional means of delivering medical care in the United States . In addition to public hospitals in larger cities and research hospitals affiliated with medical schools they were in the late twentieth century supplemented by competing investor-owned for-profit hospitals.

As charitable non-profit institutions they pay no taxes, but nevertheless seldom offer medical services to the indigent, indeed often charging the medically uninsured higher prices and aggressively collecting unpaid bills. Recently a few lawyers, have filed suit on behalf of indigent clients, but have generally been unsuccessful due to ruling by the Federal Courts that the question is a matter for the IRS, the indigent patients lacking standing.

References

• Adapted from the Wikinfo article: http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.php?title=Non-profit_hospital
• "Tax-Exempt Hospitals' Practices Challenged:46 Lawsuits Allege That Uninsured Pay the Most" article by Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, January 29, 2005