Nonprofit? hospitals redux

So, there's another article on a nonprofit hospital system in today's Boston Globe. This time it's Caritas Christi Health Care, owned and operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. If this isn't a nonprofit system, what is?

But again, there isn't a single mention of nonprofit status in the entire article. What we read about is that, "By aggressively cutting costs and boosting revenue from medical care, the Boston-based Catholic hospital chain is on track to post operating income of $31.1 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, compared to a $20.4 million loss last year." ... "The chain consolidated operations at its six Eastern Massachusetts hospitals, cut jobs and froze salaries, negotiated higher reimbursement rates from insurers, and recruited more specialists to perform more complex - and profitable - procedures."

Where is the mission? Where is the care for patients? The whole article is about cutting costs and raising revenues. I don't dispute that hospitals need to operate in the black, but there was a time when they were fully understood to be nonprofit organizations, and when they were not in the black donors stepped in to make up the difference. Nonprofit hospitals were founded by like-minded communities - religious, ethnic, neighborhood, etc., to care for their own. Now it seems all they care about is their bottom line and whether they might be a good candidate for acquisition by a bigger organization.

Is there any way to get back to the basics of nonprofit healthcare? I'm afraid that the issue is colored by our difficulty figuring out how to provide basic healthcare to everyone at a reasonable cost (dare I suggest "single payer"). As long as this situation continues, and hospitals keep talking like for-profit companies, it will continue to be very difficult to make the case for support for nonprofit hospitals. If you need help making the case for your nonprofit hospital give me a call.

Nonprofit hospitals - are they?

I just read an article in today's Boston Globe about Partners Healthcare's financial results for the quarter. Apparently Partners is reporting a large deficit for the first nine months of the year, but didn't do as badly in the third quarter as it had in the prior two. If the trend continues, the article says, it will be the first annual loss in the "company's" history.

What's missing from this article? There is not a single mention of the fact that Partners Healthcare is a nonprofit organization, and the parent of two of the best hospitals in the country (along with a number of other smaller units.) How does Partners (and Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, it's two big members) raise money from the philanthropic community with this kind of news? It's part of the problem that hospitals all over the country have in making the case for philanthropic support: they are treated in the media (and sometimes behave) like for-profit companies, and the general community gets confused.

In the whole current debate about healthcare reform, I have heard only one comment - on the radio the other day - that mentioned that most hospitals in the U.S. are non-profit. And hospitals are mentioned, for the most part, in the same breath as the other "villians" in the healthcare meltdown, big pharma and the insurance companies.

This is a real shame. I have always felt that medical care is a right, and the provision of it is a mission best served by nonprofit hospitals, and that those hospitals deserve the support of the philanthropic community. But how do we best make the case for that support? If you're interested in further thoughts on this issue, e-mail me, and I'll send you a copy of an article I wrote on this subject.