Community benefits help bridge significant access and affordability gaps, underscore growing safety net demand

BURLINGTON, MA – July 30, 2026 – Massachusetts hospitals devoted $1.1 billion to “community benefits” expenditures in fiscal year 2025, according to a new report from Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. These investments fund health-related programs in the places where people live, work, and play, helping bridge ongoing access and affordability gaps for patients. The $1.1 billion outlay marks the largest annual investment on record, even as hospitals navigate major financial challenges of their own.

Community benefit programs are an essential component of the state’s healthcare infrastructure. Hospitals conduct an extensive outreach process with local community partners to identify the real-time health needs of the towns and cities they serve – and then fund programs that address them. Hospitals also follow the Attorney General’s guidelines, which include statewide priorities such as chronic disease, housing instability and homelessness, mental health, and substance use disorder.

Through community benefit programs, hospitals have created mobile health vans, nutrition programs in schools, workplace development initiatives, senior care outreach, addiction prevention services, and much more – all at no cost to the residents being served, health insurers, or the government. The preventative services provided by many of these programs help individuals avoid the need for more serious and expensive medical care down the line.

“Far too many communities continue to experience inequities in access to healthcare, and the Community Benefits program is an important way that hospitals and HMOs can invest in improving public health,” said Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. “I appreciate all Massachusetts hospitals and HMOs that are using these programs to expand access to services and address the social and economic factors that shape health outcomes.”

Among the contributions spotlighted by the Attorney General’s Office for 2025:

• New England Baptist Hospital’s Project Search High School Transition program, which provides a one-year, school-to-work program for youth with significant disabilities. The youth receive real-life work experience, a weekly stipend, and training in employability and independent living skills to help them make successful transitions from school to productive adult life.
• Emerson Health’s Home Care Visit program, which enhances community members’ ability to navigate the healthcare system. Program staff visit recently discharged patients and conduct patient evaluations, provide care maintenance information, and share community resources to reduce hospital readmission.
• North Adams Regional Hospital’s Operation Better Start, which provides free services to clients and families to address health issues, including obesity, failure to thrive, eating disorders, hypertension, food allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, high cholesterol, pre-diabetes, diabetes, and sports nutrition. A nurse practitioner works directly with a registered dietitian and the patient’s family to generate a comprehensive treatment plan with individualized, achievable goals.

$120 million of the FY25 investments went directly toward free and discounted patient care. As coverage losses grow, hospitals are often solely responsible for covering the care that low-income, uninsured and underinsured patients receive, creating an exceedingly fragile environment to maintain 24/7 healthcare services. The situation is only expected to intensify as the impacts of federal policy changes take hold and the state’s Health Safety Net deficits grow to $300 million this year. As the state undertakes efforts to address affordability and primary care challenges, the growing support provided through hospitals’ community benefits remains an important piece of the equation.

“Growing cost and affordability pressures, resource shortages, and the expanding population of uninsured patients are all putting the hospital community in Massachusetts – and subsequently the people it serves – in a very precarious position,” said Steve Walsh, MHA’s president & CEO. “But because they never turn their backs on their communities and they are driven to advance essential healthcare, hospitals expend these community benefit investments. The stabilizing economic and ethical impacts that hospitals have on our state are shown each year in these reports.”

All Massachusetts Community Benefits reports, including information about the goals and impact of each program, are available on the AGO’s Community Benefits webpage.