A former Montana health department staffer who described himself as the lead author of legislation to scrutinize nonprofit hospitals’ charitable acts said new rules implementing the bill amounted to a hospital “wish list” and that the state needs to go back to the drawing board.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services recently adopted the rules outlining how the state will collect data on nonprofit hospitals’ charitable acts with the goal of eventually creating giving standards. That could include benchmarks, such as how much financial aid hospitals must provide patients.
The state’s rules come more than four years after a legislative audit found shortcomings in the health department’s oversight and more than a year after Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the law.
The aim is to fill in national oversight gaps that make it hard to weigh whether hospitals do enough for patients and their communities to earn their tax-exempt status as charitable organizations.
Brenton Craggs, a former regulatory affairs coordinator for the health department who said he was the initial architect of the 2023 oversight law, said the state’s plan caters to the Montana Hospital Association.
“This is basically a wish list of demands from the hospital association,” Craggs said. “They wanted us to be bound to federal standards.”
The biggest red flag, Craggs said, is that the state’s rules allow hospitals with operating losses an exemption from Montana’s eventual community benefit and financial assistance standards.
“Almost every, if not every, single nonprofit hospital in the state will have operati …