Fairview Health Services
Public records show a registered, tax-exempt organization in good standing.
What it says it does
Mission: Fairview is driven to heal, discover and educate for longer, healthier lives. Vision: Fairview is driving a healthier future. Values: Dignity: We value the uniqueness of each person and work to ensure everyone's right to privacy. We respect the cultures, values, beliefs and traditions of others and honor their talents and contributions. Integrity: We say what we mean and do what we say. We communicate openly and honestly and behave ethically. We demand the best of ourselves and accept shared accountability for our actions. Service: We work to make a difference in people's lives and in our communities. We strive for excellence by anticipating, meeting and exceeding expectations. We continually improve our programs and skills through learning and innovation. We responsibly manage our resources.
- Income
- $5.3 billion
- Spending
- $4.9 billion
- Spent on programs
- 85%
- Reserves
- 4 months of spending
- Largest source of income
- fees for its services, 95%
- Employees
- 33,383
- Volunteers
- 2,291
- Highest pay
- $5.7 million, president & ceo
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Financial health
Good: 70 out of 100. Higher than 59% of charities in its peer group (health care, over $100m).
Reserves
20 of 35Spendable reserves would cover 4.0 months of spending.
Debt
5 of 20It owes 60% of what it owns.
Living within its means
15 of 15Income exceeded spending by 8% of income.
Income trend
15 of 15Income rose 13% on the year before.
Spending floor
15 of 1585% of spending went to programs and raising each dollar of donations cost 0 cents.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Governance
Strong: 100 out of 100. Higher than 52% of charities in its peer group (health care, over $100m).
Independent board
25 of 2519 of 20 voting board members are independent.
Conflict of interest policy
15 of 15Has a written conflict of interest policy.
Whistleblower policy
8 of 8Has a written whistleblower policy.
Record keeping policy
7 of 7Has a written policy on keeping and destroying records.
Board minutes
5 of 5Keeps minutes of board meetings.
Board sees the tax return
10 of 10Gave the board a copy of this return before filing it.
Pay set independently
5 of 5Sets its chief executive's pay through independent review and comparison.
Independent check of accounts
15 of 15Its accounts were audited by an independent accountant.
No reported misuse
10 of 10Reports no diversion of assets, excess benefits or loans to insiders.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Impact evidence
Describes programs. Its tax return describes what it does but we have found no measurable results in it.
Programs described in its return (3)
- $2.3 billion spent. Fairview Health Services is an integrated academic health system located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and, along with its affiliates and subsidiaries, is one of the leading health care providers in Minnesota with $8 billion in operating revenue for 2024. Fairview offers a broad continuum of health care services through its hospitals, clinics, and other health care related operations and is a Minnesota nonprofit corporation that is exempt from federal income taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The most recent community health needs assessment (CHNA) identified 3 key areas as the greatest needs in our community - navigating and accessing care and resources; healing, connectedness, and mental health; structural racism and barriers to equity. Fairview Health Services is meeting the needs of the community by focusing on racial and ethnic populations experiencing health disparities and people experiencing poverty through partnering with the community to build solutions, removing barriers to create and expand relevant programs and focused services. Please see Schedule H for a description of additional services, community benefit activities, and the full spectrum of charity care that Fairview Health Services provides to the community. Fairview serves the entire twelve-county Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro Area, as well as communities throughout greater Minnesota and portions of Northern Iowa and Western Wisconsin, and the Dakotas. It is one of the most comprehensive and geographically accessible systems in Minnesota. The Fairview System consists of ten hospitals, including M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center and M Health Fairview Masonic Children's Hospital (collectively, "UMMC"), which is the adult and pediatric teaching hospital of the University of Minnesota. UMMC along with seven of Fairview's other hospitals in the Metro Area. Fairview also has two hospitals located in northern Minnesota. Fairview operates over 80 primary and specialty care clinics, 37 retail and specialty pharmacies, pharmacy benefit management services, rehabilitation centers, a physician network, senior care housing and long- term care facilities, medical transportation and has ownership interest in six ambulatory care centers. Fairview, through its integrated care model, aims to deliver the benefits of academic medicine to more patients and families by expanding care, research, and education by offering access to a greater pool of physicians and patients, while seeking to reduce the total cost of care for patients. Fairview, the University of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota Physicians approved an agreement which became effective in late 2018 (the "M Health Fairview Agreement"). While the parties maintain their separate governance, the M Health Fairview Agreement further aligned operations across the clinical delivery system and enhances research and education by creating a joint clinical enterprise among the parties. The M Health Fairview Agreement brings together UMMC, Fairview's community hospitals and primary care clinics, and other services. All are part of a shared care delivery system that is led by a single structure that includes academic physician leadership. The goal of the joint clinical enterprise is to create a nationally-renowned academic health system. This care system operates under a single brand, M Health Fairview, which is inclusive of Fairview's ten hospitals and its clinics. Fairview owns and operates the following hospitals: UMMC, M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital, M Health Fairview Ridges Hospital, M Health Fairview Lakes Medical Center, M Health Fairview Northland Medical Center, Fairview University Medical Center - Mesabi ("Range"), Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital, M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital, M Health Fairview Woodwinds Hospital and M Health Fairview Bethesda Long Term Acute Hospital. As of December 31, 2024, the Fairview System Hospitals had a total of 3,529 licensed beds, 1,814 available beds and 1,597 staffed beds. Fairview operates their more than 80 primary and specialty care clinics throughout the Metro Area, greater Minnesota and western Wisconsin. These clinics offer services in over 70 medical specialties, including family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, heart care, cancer care, otolaryngology, transplant care, and orthopedics. As of December 31, 2024, Fairview owned all or a portion of six ambulatory surgery centers located in the Metro Area. Fairview and Fairview Pharmacy Services own and operate pharmacies at 37 locations, including a network of retail pharmacies, oncology pharmacies, two home infusion pharmacies (Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota), and a specialty pharmacy. M Health Fairview Rehabilitation Services ("MHFRS") provides a full continuum of inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services for pediatric and adult patients as well as an inpatient rehabilitation facility, a hospital based skilled nursing facility and an adult day program. In addition to providing inpatient services in eight hospitals, MHFRS has 54 outpatient hospital based and free-standing clinics that serve pediatric and adult patients. Specialty services include rehabilitation in the following areas: Cardiac and Pulmonary rehabilitation, Audiology, Orthopedic, Sports related injuries, Neurological, Vestibular, and Cancer Rehab. Hand therapy services are also provided in seven locations. MHFRS serves about 750,000 patient visits/year. M Health Fairview Emergency Medical Services offers emergency medical services and scheduled transportation across the Metro Area and supports the community by responding to more than 60,000 calls annually. Ebenezer, a non-profit subsidiary of Fairview, provides long-term senior care facilities, senior housing, and adult care services. Ebenezer's goal is to provide a supportive environment where older adults can pursue longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives. COMMUNITY COMMITMENT Fairview,
- $1.7 billion spent. Cost of participating in government programs: Fairview is committed to serving the health care needs of members of its community. To support full access to services, Fairview participates in the following public health care programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and MinnesotaCare. Reimbursement from these programs for services rendered, generally falls below the cost of providing the care. To compensate for the under funding by government programs, Fairview makes a significant financial investment to offset these losses. While Fairview is a tax-exempt entity, it does support its local communities through various taxes it pays. In 2024, Fairview Health Services paid approximately $100 million in real estate, sales, unrelated business income and Minnesota Care taxes. In 2024, Fairview incurred $68,527,156 of medical taxes and surcharge costs in health care services that exceeded the reimbursement received by public programs, surcharge, medical taxes and fees related to these programs and not including Medicare. The following is a breakdown on costs related to the cost of participating in government programs: Costs exceed Medicaid Reimbursement: Fairview is serving thousands of low- income individuals covered by Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare. Reimbursement from these programs is less than Fairview's cost of providing care to these patients. Total Medicaid surcharge tax costs related to hospitals, pharmacies, and surgical centers was $30,867,217. MinnesotaCare tax: The state of Minnesota levies a 2 percent tax on certain healthcare provider revenues. Money generated from this tax helps to defray the costs incurred from MinnesotaCare and other programs/services for uninsured individuals. In 2024, Fairview paid $37,659,939 in MinnesotaCare taxes. Taxes and fees: Fairview does pay some property tax to local and state government. This helps to fund civil and educational services in the community. The real estate costs for 2024 totaled $1,500,198 and the sales and income taxes totaled $7,797,140. Costs exceeding Medicare Reimbursement: Fairview cares for thousands of individuals ages 65 and older who are covered by Medicare. Fairview incurred $140,280,848 of Medicare reimbursement shortfalls. Reimbursement from Medicare is less than Fairview's cost of providing care to the patient. The total cost of providing these benefits was $1,574,707,215.
- $232.8 million spent. The primary purpose of our educational and research programs is to benefit patients and the community at large by educating health professionals both within Fairview and in the broader community, and by fostering advances in knowledge and evidence-based improvements to clinical treatments and approaches to health care delivery. The Office of the Chief Academic Officer champions the work of the research and education teams at M Health Fairview. The CAO leverages resources across the M Health Fairview partnership to improve research and education in the system, creates significant milestones on our journey to becoming a learning health system, utilizes a Clinical Learner Experience survey to continually improve the education and connection with our future healthcare workforce, and builds out research support services to support systemwide studies. RESEARCH - Research is an integral and critical component in providing exceptional care to patients and the community. As an academic health system, M Health Fairview is committed to clinical innovation. A young patient was living with a horrible disease with no previously known cure. Through the care of our teams and a new kind of treatment, the patient is now doing remarkably well. While this is one patient's story, it's a "We, Together" story. We, together, ran a clinical trial that helped discover the promise of this new treatment. And we, together, not only cared for this young patient but had a role in training those who did. Throughout 2024, there were many more We, Together stories. We, together, are making our system an easy and efficient place to do practice-changing research and deliver leading-edge care. Together, we recruited 6,273 new patient accruals for clinical trials across M Health Fairview, exceeding our target for 2024. In particular, our Fairview Frontiers team continues to outperform other sites in recruiting patients, especially BIPOC populations, in wearable device trials. In 2024, the M Health Fairview Clinical Research Unit (CRU) began conducting cellular therapies, after conducting gene therapy studies for the first time in 2023, all while working to expand access beyond clinic hours. Work on a pediatric CRU culminated with the opening of the Blythe Brenden Children's Clinical Research Center, which saw its first patient at the end of 2024. Experts in our system developed our own pharmacogenomics testing, helping our care teams treat patients faster and avoid the long wait times that outsourced testing creates. Nearly 450,000 M Health Fairview patients have participated in studies that improved healthcare practices, conducted by investigators in the University of Minnesota Center for Learning Health System Sciences RapidEval program. Studies on COVID-19 in our system continue to have far-reaching effects. Since 2020, 68 University of Minnesota researchers have collaborated with others from more than 100 other organizations, participating in 17 projects, authoring 25 papers, and leading substantial work as part of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). EDUCATION - The education team is focused on the learner, the educator, and education program support. The team strives to provide an exceptional clinical education experience for all our learners in a team-based best practice care setting. As an academic health system, we're committed to training the next generation of healthcare workers by providing the best team-focused clinical education experience for a diverse and representative group of learners. When learners do better, their patients do better. We, together, also continue to build on our reputation for providing a top-class clinical learning experience among learners and academic partners. A Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) visit from the ACGME this year provided a great opportunity to demonstrate all we, together, have built and the vast improvements we've made for all of our learners. We received a 30% expansion of Graduate Medical Education slots in Fairview hospitals for the coming years, an unusually large increase that greatly expands our ability to train the next generation of healthcare professionals. Our Clinical Learning Environment surveys and Preceptor surveys continue to show improving scores over the course of 2024. Our preceptors, pacesetters, and teams continue to build the connections with learners that encourage them to start their careers with us when they graduate. Our work with providers to train the next generation of healthcare professionals includes supporting hundreds of student observations. Cost of Providing Research and Education: During the year, Fairview has created more access to clinical trials for patients throughout the region and built a reputation amongst learners and academic partners for providing a top-class clinical learning experience. Fairview has committed to training the next generation of healthcare workers by providing the best team-focused clinical education experience for learners. The current year net community benefit for providing this education experience is $201,899,356. Fairview is committed to clinical innovation. Since 2019, new and enhanced capabilities have been created that greatly increase our capacity to make medical discoveries. The current year net community benefit for providing the clinical trial experience is $3,937,360.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Legitimacy checks
Is it registered with the IRS? Passed.
Listed in the IRS master file of tax-exempt organizations as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Has the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status? Passed.
Not on the IRS automatic revocation list.
Source: Automatic revocation of exemption list, Internal Revenue Service, file dated November 6, 2026.
Are donations tax-deductible? Passed.
On the IRS list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.
Source: Publication 78 data: organizations eligible for tax-deductible contributions, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it keeping up with its IRS filings? Passed.
Most recent return on file covers the year ending December 2024.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
How long has it been tax-exempt? Passed.
Recognized by the IRS since November 1973.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it in good standing with state regulators? Passed.
Not on California's list of charities barred from soliciting. Other states are not yet checked.
Source: May Not Operate or Solicit for Charitable Purposes list, California Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, file dated November 4, 2026.
Ratings and checks are our reading of public records, using the published method. They are not a statement about anyone's honesty. If you work for this organization, you can send corrections or results, confirm you want gifts through Veridonate, or ask to be removed from giving.