1. “Authority” means the Community Hospitals Authority;

2. “Health care system” means a system providing inpatient and outpatient services that is not limited to a specific facility or modality of care;

3. “Medically indigent” means a person requiring medically necessary hospital or other health care services for the person or the dependents of the person, who has insufficient or no public or private third-party coverage and whose personal resources are insufficient to provide for needed medical care; and

4. “Participating health care system” means a health care system that has within it a major community hospital that expends at least Five Million Dollars ($5,000,000.00) annually providing care for medically indigent persons from a multicounty service area and that is located in a municipality having a population of three hundred seventy-five thousand (375,000) or more which does not have a health care system statutorily charged with indigent care and medical teaching or training responsibilities on the effective date of the Community Hospitals Authority Act.¹