Inside the more than 600 Catholic hospitals across the country, not a single nun can be found occupying a chief executive suite, according to the Catholic Health Association.
ST. LOUIS —
The St. Louis area serves as the de facto capital of Catholic hospital systems. Three of the largest are headquartered here, along with the Catholic hospital lobbying arm. Catholicism is deeply rooted in the region’s culture. During Pope John Paul II’s only US stop in 1999, he led Mass downtown in a packed stadium of more than 100,000 people.Ryan grew up Catholic in Wisconsin and joined a convent while in nursing school in the 1960s, surprising her family.
Their early foray grew into one of the largest Catholic health systems in the country, with annual revenue exceeding $10 billion, according to itsBut Ryan, like many nuns in leadership roles in recent decades, found herself confronted with an existential crisis. As fewer women became nuns, she had to ensure the system’s future without them.
Above all else, the Catholic faith calls on its hospitals to treat everyone regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay, said, a vice president of the Catholic Health Association. No nuns run the trade group’s member hospitals, according to the lobbying group. But the mission that compelled the nuns is “what compels us now,” Rooney said. “It’s not just words on a wall.”
From a business perspective, though, it’s hard to distinguish a Catholic hospital system like SSM from a secular one, said Ruth Hollenbeck, a former Anthem insurance executive who retired in 2018 after negotiating Missouri hospital contracts. In the contracts, she said, the difference amounted to a single paragraph stating that Catholic hospitals wouldn’t do anything contrary to the church’s directives.
Ascension, Mercy, and SSM disputed Lown’s methodology, arguing it doesn’t take into account the gap between the payments they receive for Medicaid patients and the cost of delivering their care. The
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