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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Parent of Area Hospitals Loosens Ties with Church

Catholic Healthcare West, which owns Northridge Hospital Medical Center and Glendale Memorial Hospital, recently made headlines by changing its name to Dignity Health and loosening its ties to the Catholic Church. San Francisco-based Dignity Health, the country’s fifth largest health care system, said its move is meant to position the organization to grow and acquire more hospitals across the country, including more secular institutions like Glendale and Northridge. It says that the decision will have no impact on local operations. But those who were around when Catholic Healthcare West bought the local institutions from UniHealth in 1999 still recall that the transition from a secular to a faith-based institution was far from smooth. At issue, was the church’s stand on women’s reproductive rights. That history may help to illustrate the kind of challenges the not-for-profit is facing as it expands beyond its markets. It also might help to explain the reasons the organization recently moved to distance itself from the church. Following the purchase of Northridge and Glendale, the National Organization of Women held protests and candlelight vigils. Their worry: under a Catholic health care system, women would lose the ability to receive a number of services, including in-vitro fertilization and most obviously, abortion. “We were very upset at the time,” said Linda Pruett, co-president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of NOW. The transition was also culturally difficult for the many Jewish physicians long affiliated with Northridge, recalls Layton Crouch, managing director of Encino-based Pacific Venture Group, who was a Northridge administrator at the time. “There was a concern to the doctors at Northridge about how the Catholic Church and doctrine would affect their ability to practice,” Crouch said. To contend with these fractious issues, the former CHW created what has come to be commonly known as the community model. Its non-Catholic hospitals (15 of 40 hospitals in the system) would be governed by a Statement of Common Values, a somewhat looser interpretation of Catholic guidance. Those Values permit sterilization, but not in-vitro fertilization and no “direct abortion,” which grants an exception for abortion when the life of the mother is at stake. The Catholic hospitals in the system, however, would abide by Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a much stricter interpretation. Sterilization is not allowed and neither is in-vitro or direct abortion — except when the life of the mother is at stake. The community model did not fully satisfy women’s groups who opposed the purchase of Northridge and Glendale. “There are all kinds of reasons women need abortions in a hospital setting,” said Susan Berke Fogel, director of reproductive health at the National Health Law Center in Los Angeles. “What CHW has done is eliminate needed services available to women.” The model did not make the church very happy, either. Trying to balance the needs of communities with Catholic doctrine got the former CHW system in a nightmarish scenario last year in Arizona, when the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix stripped St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix from its affiliation with the church and excommunicated a nun who participated in a decision to abort an 11-week old fetus to save the mother’s life. Bishop Thomas Olmstead said the 2009 procedure violated ethical and religious directives of the national Conference of Catholic Bishops. With so many groups at odds with each other over the contentious issues surrounding reproductive rights, it’s easy to see why the health care system felt it was better to distance itself from the church. Under the new governance structure, Dignity Health said it will still be “rooted” in the Catholic tradition, but will no longer be an official ministry of the Roman Catholic Church. The organization’s new nine-member board of directors will include two nuns, with the rest being lay business leaders and health care executives. Faith-based institutions seem to have done well here in the Valley. The Providence and Adventist systems are both large institutions with similar creeds when it comes to reproductive issues. It will be interesting to see how these institutions react to CHW’s move to distance its relationship from the church. Will they follow suit or continue on their own path? And if they do, could it hinder their ability to compete? Dignity said in its statement that it anticipates growth, so one reason behind this move may be a deal in the works with a secular institution or group. James Lott, executive vice president of the Southern California Hospital Association, for one, believes that the move is a signal that the organization plans to be “a more serious player in the market.” Regardless, people like Burke and Pruett are keeping an eye on the local institutions to see if the name change will mean any substantial change in the way reproductive services are handled. While Dignity says there will be no change, they remain hopeful. “We hope that this decision from CHW will mean more and better choices for women,” Pruett said.

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