A non-profit hospital, or not-for-profit hospital, is a hospital which is organized as a non-profit corporation. Based on their charitable purpose and most often affiliated with a religious denomination they are a traditional means of delivering medical care in the United States. Non-profit hospitals are distinct from government owned public hospitals and privately owned for-profit hospitals.
In 2003, of the roughly 3,900 nonfederal, short-term, acute care general hospitals in the United States, the majority—about 62 percent—were nonprofit. The rest included government hospitals (20 percent) and for-profit hospitals (18 percent).
Courts generally have rejected challenges to the tax-free status of non-profit hospitals by indigent patients who are forced to pay for services on the grounds that the question is a matter for the IRS and that the indigent patients lacking standing.
Read more about Non-profit Hospital: California Law
Famous quotes containing the word hospital:
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)