Corporate and Catholic Healthcare: Overcoming Incoherence
Michael Redinger, MD, MA, Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Kalamazoo, MI
Over the last quarter-century, ownership and operation of Catholic healthcare institutions has paralleled broader trends in the American healthcare landscape towards increased consolidation of hospitals and practices in order to secure increased efficiencies and lower costs. No longer the province of local Catholic religious communities who shaped the culture and direction of individual hospitals through their direct presence and charism, Catholic healthcare is increasingly corporatized as large multi-state non-profit entities with annual revenues in the tens of billions.
Insufficient attention has been spent on the purpose and form of Catholic healthcare institutions in an increasingly corporate landscape and the threat corporatization poses to the coherence of institutional claims to Catholic identity. This paper will broadly outline organizational changes in Catholic healthcare and propose how Catholic healthcare needs to be reoriented in its essential focus towards a renewed commitment to the persons it employs and serves in order to better model Christ the healer. While life issues will continue to differentiate Catholic health care from secular alternatives, opportunities exist to cultivate a holistic Catholic approach grounded in the integral development of the human person. This proposal would include a “preferential option” for the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and physically disabled in care delivery, respect for the collective bargaining rights of hospital employees, and a commitment to subsidiarity and solidarity with local community partners. More engaged and comprehensive oversight is necessary on the part of Catholic bishops at the local, state conference, and national level to ensure both fidelity to the ERDs and minimize risks from broader corporatization.
Insufficient attention has been spent on the purpose and form of Catholic healthcare institutions in an increasingly corporate landscape and the threat corporatization poses to the coherence of institutional claims to Catholic identity. This paper will broadly outline organizational changes in Catholic healthcare and propose how Catholic healthcare needs to be reoriented in its essential focus towards a renewed commitment to the persons it employs and serves in order to better model Christ the healer. While life issues will continue to differentiate Catholic health care from secular alternatives, opportunities exist to cultivate a holistic Catholic approach grounded in the integral development of the human person. This proposal would include a “preferential option” for the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and physically disabled in care delivery, respect for the collective bargaining rights of hospital employees, and a commitment to subsidiarity and solidarity with local community partners. More engaged and comprehensive oversight is necessary on the part of Catholic bishops at the local, state conference, and national level to ensure both fidelity to the ERDs and minimize risks from broader corporatization.