In communities across the nation, consumers are discovering that their access to a full range of reproductive health services is being threatened by mergers of nonsectarian comunity hospitals with nearby religiously-affiliated hospitals and health systems. The problem arises when these partnerships require that a nonsectarian hospital adopt religious health care doctrine and ban services deemed immoral. As a result, patients can lose convenient access to hospital-based provision of emergency contraception, tubal ligations, vasectomies, infertility treatments, abortions and other services.
Efforts to protect the religious identity and "conscience" rights of sectarian healthcare providers should not be allowed to cancel out patients' rights to a full range of reproductive healthcare services. One way to seek an appropriate balance of these rights is to ensure that consumers who may be affected are consulted and afforded an opportunity to participate in devising creative solutions to protect reproductive services. Such consumer involvement is particularly appropriate when the hospitals involved are nonprofit institutions that have been created and supported with charitable donations, tax exemptions and volunteer labor.
Women's healthcare advocacy groups have been developing a number of models of effective consumer intervention. These include reaching out to hospital boards of directors and donors, holding public informational forums in communities facing mergers, working with physicians, participating in state and federal regulatory processes, proposing legislation and, in rare cases, filing lawsuits. This presentation will review these models and look at the results, which have ranged from halting proposed mergers to devising financial and legal methods of preserving access to services.
Learning Objectives: N/A
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.