Members of America’s Essential Hospitals — and hospitals like them — fill a vital safety net role in communities across the country. They share a mission to care for everyone, including the uninsured and underinsured, low-income patients, and other marginalized people. Entire communities rely on these essential health systems for lifesaving services, such as trauma and burn care; public health and safety; and health professionals training.
Yet, despite this critical role, no statutory definition exists to ensure safety net resources reach these indispensable providers. Legislation introduced in the 118th Congress, the bipartisan Reinforcing Essential Health Systems for Communities Act (H.R. 7397), aimed to fill this gap in federal law. Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.) introduced this bill, which gained 15 cosponsors.
This legislation would codify “essential health system” in statute, giving policymakers a powerful tool to better target support to the nation’s safety net and improve health care access and public health by using practical and evidence-based measures of a hospital’s payer mix and the amount of uncompensated care it provides. These measures are consistent with recommendations by the Institute of Medicine more than two decades ago to define safety net hospitals. The bill also incorporated recommendations from essential hospital leaders about how to make the designation easy to implement and responsive to state variations.
We call on Congress to recognize the urgent need to define hospitals that form the foundation of our nation’s health care safety net by defining essential hospitals into law.
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