The hospital community benefit standards program and health reform.

This article suggests that the community hospital can be an important key to health reform at the local level; that community benefit guidelines are acceptable to hospitals and community leaders in a 49-site national demonstration program; and that these guidelines can prove useful for communities in moving toward health reform. Types of community involvement by hospitals are categorized, and examples of each type are developed. Community benefit programs can be a promising approach to effectively respond at the local level to the problems of poor health status, lack of access to care, and increasing health care costs. Addressing financing of care without attention to changes in the delivery system will not lead to effective health reform.