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Compassionate care.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

In the mid-1990s, PeaceHealth's charitable mission to provide health care to those in need, regardless of their ability to pay, was at odds with its increasingly hard-nosed reputation.

But in the past three years, the parent corporation of Sacred Heart Medical Center has become more compassionate when dealing with financially strapped patients and has made its charity policies more widely known, hospital officials and patient advocates say.

PeaceHealth has become "much more sensitive" to how it treats patients struggling to pay bills, Chief Financial Officer Skip Kriz said.

"In the past, our focus was more on the clinical side and less on the interpersonal, compassionate side," he said. "Our whole culture has moved much closer to the compassionate side of what we do."

Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action Campaign, a statewide patient advocacy group, agrees that PeaceHealth is doing a better job than most Oregon hospitals of telling patients about its charity policies.

"Most hospitals don't advertise the availability of their financial assistance programs and understand that it's a tool for ensuring access in their communities," she said.

The changes at PeaceHealth come at a time when nonprofit hospitals are under fire nationally on a number of fronts.

Last February, Illinois tax officials revoked the tax-exempt status of Provena Covenant Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Urbana, in part for its aggressive collection practices with needy patients. The hospital was ordered to...

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