Catholic hospitals: strategy for survival

The "ethic" of competition that pervades health care today has altered hospitals' traditional role, fostered alternative care systems, and created cost-containment pressures. If Catholic hospitals are to survive in this environment, they must act collaboratively. First, they must collect and share data relating to community, diocese, and market needs. Second, Catholic hospitals must create a structure for joint planning that enables them to network with each other as well as with community-based health organizations. Third, they must coordinate their efforts statewide so that they can reinforce each other's actions in the public policy arena. Finally, Catholic hospitals must continue to explore the potential of multihospital entities. The bishops' 1980 pastoral letter on health care--an invitation for dialogue calling for structural change in the health care system--was intended to renew the healing mission. Whether Catholic hospitals have the determination, the imagination, and the leadership to renew their mission, however, will depend on board members, chief executives, sponsoring communities, physicians, and staffs, who must address today's concerns in the contexts of faith and of Catholic health care's noble history.