Question: Healthcare workforce shortages, lack of employment and economic stability have been identified as a significant health need in the hospital's CHNA. In addition, the state has provided significant matching funds for scholarships in health-related fields such as nursing. The hospital provides scholarships to students to reduce the financial barrier to attend college and to increase the healthcare workforce.
The hospital's scholarships have a 2-year work requirement. Given all of the facts and circumstances, can the cost of these scholarships qualify as community benefit?
Recommendation: We commend hospitals that provide scholarships to individuals seeking to earn a health care degree to obtain a state license/certification to practice as a health care professional.
However, we do NOT recommend reporting scholarships with a work requirement as community benefit. We consider scholarships with a work requirement to be a recruitment strategy and not community benefit.
Rationale:
- The "scholarship" would not be reportable as a contribution for community benefit on line 7i, as it's not a contribution, given the quid pro quo element involved (i.e., 2-year work requirement).
- It is not reportable as health professions education, presuming that the hospital wouldn't be providing the education.
- It does not qualify as a community health improvement service, as the expenses involved are scholarship payments to third parties, not expenses incurred by the hospital to operate its own programs or events to meet community health needs.
We do recommend reporting as community benefit (B4: Health Professions Education-Scholarships/funding for health professions education), scholarships for nursing and other qualifying health professions, as long as the scholarship does not have a work requirement and is not part of an employee benefit/professional development program.
(March 2026)
Question: If scholarships include an agreement to 'work off' their scholarship at a particular hospital, can the scholarships be counted as community benefit?
Recommendation: The scholarships you describe seem to be designed to enhance the workforce at your organization. Therefore, we would not consider it community benefit and recommend not including the amount in the quantitative community benefit figures. You could report in the narrative section of your community benefit report how many scholarships you have given.
(2007)