Adding mini-hospital resolves clash between religious, secular facilities

As secular, for-profit hospital chains merge with rule-bound religious facilities, patients are facing restrictions on their care that they hadn’t faced before. While for-profit hospitals will perform virtually any legal medical procedure, hospitals owned by religious institutions often impose faith-based limits on the treatments they will offer, with some refusing to provide services like emergency contraception for rape victims, vasectomies or tubal ligations.

However, one Louisville, KY based hospital may have found a compromise that could sidestep the issues entirely. The University of Louisville, which is poised to merge with Catholic-owned St. Mary’s Healthcare, plans to build what it calls a “hospital within a hospital” within St. Mary’s. The mini-hospital, which should cost about $15 million, will provide services that St. Mary’s will not.

U of L officials admit that building the special unit won’t be easy. For one thing, the university will have to get a separate hospital operating license for the unit, and hire a new group of employees.  Not only that, the tension between what the mini-hospital is doing and what St. Mary’s will permit will inevitably be something of a distraction.

Some critics, including state Attorney General Jack Conway, argue that the merger may not be such a good idea if U of L has to spend $15 million just to make it happen. After all, they note, the same $15 million could be used to pay for the care of the poor and uninsured.

As I see it, though, these objections are mostly posturing. The reality is that conflicts like this will crop up across the U.S., as there’s no end in sight to the country’s massive wave of hospital mergers.

I’m glad to see that U of L might have found a way of resolving its differences with St. Mary’s without the two sides coming to blows. Sure, it may be a bit messy, but if it allows the hospitals to pool their resources effectively, I hope other hospital dealmakers will consider this approach.  Building the hospital-within-a-hospital is certainly better then letting the issue fester.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

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