Golf moan.
Years ago Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota acquired both the local Methodist and the Saint Marys hospitals into their system. Saint Marys was the first hospital in the city, founded after a tornado tore through the city in 1883. It was run by some dedicated sisters, who were able to hire the first Mayo-named doctor and was the start of the clinic.
The Methodist hospital handles obstetrics and all the related procedures, including several that aren’t condoned by the Catholic Church. However, if a baby is born prematurely it is transported to Saint Marys, which is the much larger facility (200 ICU rooms, 60+ operating rooms, 1200 beds).
My cousin came to town to visit a relative, and not knowing where to go, went to Methodist Hospital. They looked up the registration and told him the patient was at the other hospital. My cousin said, “No, he’s Lutheran!” Of course these hospitals serve anyone.
I spent a few days in ICU at a St. Peter’s hospital a few years back. There was a plain cross hanging over the door, I was asked while I was being admitted if I wanted a priest to visit my room, and one of the channels on the TV was a live feed of a chapel altar. Other than that, it was exactly like any other hospital.
The Catholic Church does permit the removal of extreme measures to preserve life. Individual cases can be debatable, but “comotose and not expected to ever recover, breathing only with a respirator” is usually considered extreme.
Most saints who are recognized by the Catholic church aren’t recognized by most other denominations, but most denominations do refer to New Testament figures as saints, and I’ve heard of a few hospitals named “St. Luke’s”, doubtless influenced by Luke having been (according to tradition) a physician. Probably still Catholic, but could also be other denominations.
Kettering Medical Center in Kettering, Ohio, was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Saint Louis MO has Barnes-Jewish hospital which is the result of a 1990s merger of two adjacent hospitals, Barnes Hospital and Jewish Hospital. Down the highway a couple miles is St, Luke’s, and a few miles the other way is SSM Health, which is really Sisters of Saint Mary Hospital under the hood. No kidding, the board of directors of the hospital group is a group of nuns from one convent / house.
There’s a Methodist and a Baptist one also, but I’m not recalling their names right now.
Every denomination gets to play.
Missouri Baptist (or MoBap) is the Baptist one. Not sure what Methodist one you mean… St. Anthony’s was another Catholic one but it merged with Mercy (previously St. John’s Mercy) which is a multi-state operation now. Perhaps St. Luke’s?
Barnes is part of BJC Healthcare, which was a merger that include Barnes-Jewish and Christian Health Services, just to cover their bases. Missouri Baptist is actually part of BJC now too…
The Catholic Church is not against “pulling the plug” / removing a respirator, as evidenced in the Karen Ann Quinlan case. Her parents were devout Catholics and with the support of their priest, argued that she had the right to die. It was the hospital, in her case, that refused to take her off the respirator:
"When she was 21, Quinlan became unconscious after she consumed Valium along with alcohol while on a crash diet and lapsed into a coma, followed by a persistent vegetative state. After doctors, under threat from prosecutors, refused the request of her parents, Joseph and Julia Quinlan, to disconnect Quinlan’s ventilator, which the parents believed constituted extraordinary means of prolonging her life, her parents filed suit to disconnect Quinlan from her ventilator. . . .
Catholic moral theology does not require that “extraordinary means” be employed to preserve a patient’s life. Such means are any procedure which might place an undue burden on the patient, family, or others and would not result in reasonable hope of benefiting the patient. A person or a person’s representative in cases if a person is not able to decide can refuse extraordinary means of treatment even if that will hasten natural death, and it is considered ethical.[8][9]
It is to that principle that Quinlan’s parents appealed when they requested that the extraordinary means of a ventilator be removed"
In Boston, the merger of a Methodist hospital and a Jewish hospital resulted in the inclusively named Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
My memories of her condition are a bit foggy, since this was 35 years ago. The last time I visited her, on a Friday, she was totally unresponsive. I talked to her for a while; the last thing I said to her was, “Now, you stay out of trouble.” She died the following Monday (the day before the Challenger disaster).
Ayuh! The St. Lukes Hospital here was started by the Episcopal Church, though I think it has long since moved from church owned and run to being just another secular, for profit hospital.
St. Alphonsus, the catholic hospital is still operated by the church, specifically Trinity Health, having been first run by The Sisters of The Holy Cross
As far as emergency services go, there was a law passed in 1986
42 U.S. Code § 1395dd
(a) Medical screening requirement
In the case of a hospital that has a hospital emergency department, if any individual (whether or not eligible for benefits under this subchapter) comes to the emergency department and a request is made on the individual’s behalf for examination or treatment for a medical condition, the hospital must provide for an appropriate medical screening examination within the capability of the hospital’s emergency department, including ancillary services routinely available to the emergency department, to determine whether or not an emergency medical condition (within the meaning of subsection (e)(1)) exists.(b) Necessary stabilizing treatment for emergency medical conditions and labor
(1) In general
If any individual (whether or not eligible for benefits under this subchapter) comes to a hospital and the hospital determines that the individual has an emergency medical condition, the hospital must provide either—(A) within the staff and facilities available at the hospital, for such further medical examination and such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition, or
(B) for transfer of the individual to another medical facility in accordance with subsection (c).
[…]
Basically if you go into an ER, the hospital must screen you and if you have an emergency medical condition, the hospital must either try and stabilize you with what they have or transfer you. They can’t just turn someone away because of a difference in religion. The penalties for violating this law only apply to hospitals that participate in Medicare - which is virtually all of them.
~Max
Here in Oz things are pretty similar.
But consolidation of private hospital businesses means names have been changing. Where I live a lot of Catholic hospitals are now branded as Calvary, although at base they are now part of The Little Company of Mary, itself administered by Calvary Ministries, which was established by the Holy See for that purpose. The group is now quite large having acquired other non-church private hospitals and building new ones.
The Presbyterian church (now Uniting) has St Andrews hospital. So saint’s names are not a clear guide.
Memorable last words!
Is it possible that the topic of respirator removal didn’t come up at the hospital because she wasn’t unresponsive and on life support for that long? I’ve heard that there are patients on respirators for many months or even years.
and @Q.Q.Switcheroo I’d heard of Beth Israel Deaconess and wondered at the name.
Mom had always been a hoot; she had worked for years as a nursing assistant at the same hospital, in the maternity ward, and at her funeral I heard a lot of stories from her former co-workers about her livening things up.
Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember a family discussion about her care after the heart attack that put her in the coma. I think we were all hoping against hope that she might still recover.
Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia has had nothing to do with Presbyterianism for a very long time.
Same with Jefferson Methodist Hospital and Methodism.
Similar situation with Temple University Hospital - Episcopal Campus — even though the Temple in question was a Baptist Temple.
Yeah, I gave birth at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, in NYC, but I don’t know that it has a current affiliation with the church. But a large fraction of US hospitals are technically not-for-profit and were started by one religious group or another.
If I see saint, I’m assuming Catholic, but wouldn’t be surprised if Episcopalian or even Lutheran. Methodist and especially Baptist or Presbyterian would be surprising.
One local hospital is St. Mary’s, but was sold a decade ago to a crappy for profit org and became less helpful.
Even the Christian Scientists?
As the church of Scotland, Presbyterians have a special place for St Andrew. As I noted above, we have one so named Hospital were I live founded by the Presbyterians. Beyond that, in general, protestants are usually pretty happy with the apostles, but tend not to go for the latecomers. Mary is of course a dead giveaway. Non-conformist churches are less likely to care about any saints.
There is however rather a divide between the modern Presbyterians outwith Scotland, and the traditional dour Scots version.