CATHOLIC hospitals have been a force in American medicine since the Industrial Revolution, when nuns arrived from Europe to tend to immigrant communities. They are still flourishing. The total number of Catholic acute-care hospitals, where patients receive short-term treatment for urgent health conditions, increased by 8% from 2001 to 2016. In the same period, the number of beds in such hospitals grew by 18%. One in six acute-care beds lies within a Catholic hospital.
Over the past two decades, economic pressures have driven health-care providers to consolidate. To achieve scale and increase their bargaining power with insurance companies, independent hospitals have merged to form larger systems. Catholic hospitals look to each other for potential partnerships first, says Lois Uttley, the director of MergerWatch, an advocacy group. Of the ten largest non-profit health systems in America, six are Catholic. To ensure their survival, Catholic hospitals have also overhauled their leadership. While in 1968 there were 770 religious officials—often nuns—running hospitals, today there are only four; the rest are...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/28SqPnm
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