Making room in the marketplace: a special initiative for the poor

Faced with increased concern over the role of the voluntary healthcare sector, specifically Catholic providers, in the care of the poor, Mercy Health Services (MHS), a healthcare system, established a two-year, three-phase planning and development effort known as the Special Initiative for the Poor (SIP). Established in March 1986, SIP was designed to find out: Who are the poor? What are their needs? What is MHS's responsibility in meeting these needs? Among its objectives, SIP was charged with: 1. Educating and raising awareness of governance and management staffs. 2. Developing a way to assess human needs. 3. Determining the financial implications of the organization's commitment to the poor. 4. Recommending ways to enhance the understanding, energy, and commitment to the poor throughout the system. During the first six months, SIP staffers traveled to hospitals and subsidiaries throughout the system, meeting with management and staff, explaining the project, laying the groundwork, and gaining support. In the development phase, SIP created the Community Assessment of Human Needs, a systematic approach to identify and understand the unmet human needs of the poor. It also developed a simple inventory formula to help hospitals determine which of their programs were specifically for the poor and determine what these programs cost. Finally, in the implementation stage, several of SIP's recommendations are challenging the organization to move beyond its current commitments.