Do Bishops Run Your Hospital?
The Catholic Church is making health care decisions for more and more Americans—whether they know it or not.
—Stephanie Mencimer |

One morning in November 2010, an ambulance brought a woman who was 15 weeks pregnant to the emergency room at Sierra Vista Regional Health Center, 70 miles outside Tucson, Arizona. She had been carrying twins and had miscarried one at home in the bathtub. The chances of the second fetus making it were "minuscule," Dr. Robert Holder, the OB-GYN on call that day, later recalled in an affidavit. He told the woman and her husband that trying to continue the pregnancy would put her at risk of severe bleeding and infection. In short, she needed an emergency abortion.

But there was a problem: Sierra Vista was in the midst of a trial merger with a Catholic hospital company, Carondelet Health Network, which required its doctors to abide by the church's ethical and religious directives. Hospital administrators told Holder that because the surviving fetus still had a heartbeat, he could not perform an abortion. Holder had to send the patient to a hospital in Tucson—a three-hour delay that he believed put her at risk for life-threatening complications.

The doctors at Sierra Vista aren't the only ones to struggle with submitting their medical decisions to a higher authority. A growing number of patients are finding their health care options governed by the church's guidelines as Catholic hospitals, long major players in the health care market, have been on a merger streak, acquiring everything from local hospital systems to medical practices, nursing homes, and health insurance plans.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number of American hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church grew 16 percent, even as the number of public hospitals and secular nonprofit hospitals dropped 31 percent and 12 percent, respectively, according to an upcoming report by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch, a nonprofit that tracks religious health care mergers. In 2012, Catholic hospitals and health care systems were involved in 24 mergers or acquisitions, according to Irving Levin Associates, a market research firm. Ten of the 25 largest nonprofit hospital systems in the country are Catholic, and Catholic hospitals care for 1 in 6 American patients. In at least eight states, 30 percent or more of patient admissions are at Catholic facilities.

Ten of the 25 largest nonprofit hospital systems in the country are Catholic, and Catholic hospitals care for 1 in 6 patients.

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/catholic-hospitals-bishops-contraception-abortion-health-care