Question: Our hospitals serves as the county morgue and receives some reimbursement for the cost of storage and the autopsy space. However, the reimbursement does to cover the full cost to provide this service. Can we report losses as community benefit?
Recommendation: In this situation, the hospital is meeting the community benefit objective: "relief of a government burden to improve health." Since a community need has been established, we recommend reporting the loss as a subsidized service.
(April 2019)