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| Texas Health Resources, Blue Cross reach deal to keep hospitals in network - Dallas Morning News Posted: 17 Dec 2010 09:32 PM PST TO This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| St. Joseph's deadline to align health care, doctrine is delayed - AZCentral.com Posted: 17 Dec 2010 10:08 PM PST by Michael Clancy - Dec. 18, 2010 12:00 AM St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center has won a last-minute reprieve from Bishop Thomas Olmsted's Friday deadline for the hospital to meet his demands over moral teaching or lose its status as a Catholic hospital. The deadline was moved to Tuesday after a letter from Catholic Healthcare West, the hospital's parent company, reached the bishop late Thursday. The letter's contents are unknown, and St. Joseph's Hospital officials had no additional comment. Diocesan officials said nothing more than announcing the new deadline. Hospital sources said the letter attempts to come up with a way to acknowledge the bishop's concerns that is acceptable to both parties. Olmsted's demands that the hospital comply with Catholic moral teaching centers on a medical procedure that he determined violated a Catholic health-care directive by terminating a pregnancy to save the mother's life. To retain his blessing as bishop, Olmsted required hospital officials to acknowledge in writing that the medical procedure last year was a violation of Catholic directives for health-care institutions. The diocese and hospital have spent months attempting to come to agreement over the bishop's belief that St. Joseph's violated the church's Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services in the matter, in which a young mother of four was suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Her condition rapidly grew worse after she became pregnant, and the lives of the mother and her unborn child were in jeopardy. The hospital on Thursday said that without intervention both would have died. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant. "We believe that all life is sacred," hospital Vice President Suzanne Pfister said. "In this case, we saved the only life we could save, which was the mother's." Olmsted has declared the surgery an abortion, while St. Joseph's has argued that the procedure was allowable under church-approved exceptions to the abortion policy. The exceptions allow for termination of the fetus if that is not the direct purpose of a surgery, such as in cases of uterine cancer or a blockage of a fallopian tube. "In keeping with my moral authority as bishop of Phoenix and my interpretation of the Ethical and Religious Directives based on that authority, I have determined after review of the facts and circumstances that an abortion did occur," the bishop wrote in his Nov. 22 letter to Catholic Healthcare West announcing the requirements he wanted fulfilled. Besides getting the hospital's agreement that the procedure violated Catholic moral teaching, the bishop wants agreement from the hospital for a review and certification process to ensure full compliance with the directives, and that the hospital agree to send its medical staff to training about the directives. The entire diocesan staff spent Friday at Mount Claret Retreat Center in Phoenix taking part in a mandatory Advent retreat and Christmas party. The previously planned gathering by itself could explain the extended deadline. Despite the closure of the diocese offices, a group of women from the organization Code Pink and others from the Catholic group Call to Action Arizona gathered there Friday morning to protest the bishop's position. They carried signs reading "Charity supersedes law" and "What medical degree does Olmsted have?" Liz Hourican, a Code Pink activist, said the group was standing up for women's health care and to pledge support to St. Joseph's "if they stand up to the bishop." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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