e.g., Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, NJ and many others. I bet most people have seen or even been to these places. What gives??
In: Economics
Because…many religious institutions have ethos of “caring for the sick and dying” and many participants willingly give money to charities
Many religions teach that it’s important to care for others and nurture the sick as a foundational principle. And when you have an institution dedicated to spreading and performing morally good acts, supporting medicine is an easy way to go about it.
In the case of those hospitals you mentioned, many are not just supported by the church, they’re outright owned and operated by the church. It helps that religious organizations also get certain tax exemptions here in the United States, which can lower the operating cost of such hospitals by association.
The very word for “building full of doctors” is derived from the religious order known as the Hospitalers.
As CMO for a large Catholic hospital and medical director of a Baptist one I feel qualified to weigh in on this one.
At least in our region, most hospitals started as church or convent based infirmaries. Sometime in the ?50-60’s (before my time) they transitioned to stand alone hospitals and began shifting from clergy administration to physician administration. Around the 80’s-90’s CMS (Medicare) had a big push for bigger health systems with “professional” administrators and physician leadership was gradually replaced by business types to meet new reporting requirements but then increasingly to focus on financial metric performance.
So we went from compassion based healthcare systems to science based healthcare systems to profit based. All while keeping the original name and religious connotations. And tax free status (though I believe this would be equally possible without the religious naming convention).
As an example this Catholic hospital still has a nunnery attached with dozens of rooms too small for even a twin bed (so they sit empty), and our literal last nun (who was not from the US) would just roam the halls offering hand touches and prayer until she passed away during covid. The nursing stations each have a locked cubby built into the wall that has emergency Bible and holy water for last rites. That now no one is qualified to use.
For what it’s worth there is a slowly rising trend toward physician leadership again in hospitals and healthcare systems, with remarkably positive early results.
Because they were usually founded in the 1800s or early 1900s by faith organizations, usually with a mission to care for the poor, as there was no health insurance and the poor had no means to pay for care. These organizations became important to the community. Most are still faith-based nonprofits that provide a certain amount of charity care. I have worked in this field all my life.
Latest Answers