Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
August 16, 2000
Mercy Sister from Denver named to head CHA
By Catholic News Service
ST. LOUIS (CNS) - The Catholic Health Association of the United States has installed Mercy Sister Phyllis Hughes of Mercy Housing Inc. of Denver as chairperson of its board of trustees for the 2000-2001 fiscal year.
Sister Hughes, who succeeds Michael D. Connelly, president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare Partners in Cincinnati, is Mercy Housing's vice president for healthy communities initiatives.
According to a June 20 announcement from CHA, Dr. Michael F. Collins, president and CEO of Caritas Christi Health Care System in Boston, is chairperson-elect and will head the CHA board in 2001-2002.
Sister Patricia Eck, a Sister of Bon Secours who chairs the board for her order's health system, based in Marriottsville, Md., was elected to a three-year term as secretary-treasurer.
Re-elected to three terms on the board were Bishop John J. Leibrecht of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo., and John S. Lore, executive vice president of St. Louis-based Ascension Health.
New board members elected to three-year terms included Mercy Sister Helen Marie Burns, vice president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, and Sister of Rosemary Donley, a Sister of Charity who is a nursing professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
The CHA announcement noted that the elections of officers and board members came during the organization's 85th annual Catholic Health Assembly, held in mid-June in San Francisco.
The assembly's theme was "Healing the Person, Healing the Nation: A New Horizon for Catholic Health Care." During the meeting, health care workers discussed challenges facing today's medical profession and looked for ways to improve their ministry in the future.
In one session, health care workers were advised to keep up to speed with technology because soon consumers will have the option to design and select health care plans and providers and participate in diagnoses, according to Molly Joel Coye, a senior fellow with Pricewaterhouse Coopers Institute for the Future, based in Menlo Park, Calif.
She pointed out that until recently health maintenance organizations have been successful in limiting patient choice of providers. But as consumers use the Internet and gain more information, she said, their choice of providers will be "up for grabs."
She predicted that the rise of consumerism and greater access to technology is inevitable and will require a fundamental mind shift by physicians and providers.
Coye said that "cybercare" and electronic house calls - a two-way video interactive system between caregivers and patients at home - will have dramatic implications for physician office visits, which number 700 million annually. She said patients will be able to use technology to avoid visiting the doctor.
During another session, a speaker addressed rationing of health care, saying that access to health care depends on lifestyle, place and economics.
Larry Churchill, professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said limiting medical care can have positive aspects, particularly if it leads to the expansion of social services and less social inequality.
"We assume that more health care is better health care," he said, but he pointed out that limitations could keep doctors from ordering unnecessary procedures.
Churchill also expressed the benefit of letting life run a natural course without invasive medicine to prolong it.
"Limits should be embraced because living with limits enhances life," he said. "A limited life span is a blessing and not a fault."
In another session, health care workers were urged to bring more diversity to the health care executive level.
Rupert Evans, president and CEO of the Institute for Diversity in Health Management in Chicago, noted that although 23 percent of U.S. health care workers are African-American or Hispanic, less than 2 percent of health care executives come from those backgrounds.
It's symptomatic, he said, that health care systems never make the annual Fortune top-50 list of firms with strong diversity programs.
The institute, founded in 1994 by a coalition of groups including the American Hospital Association, works to increase minority representation among health care executives.
"We have a three-pronged approach," Evans said. "First, we try to increase the number of minorities in the pipeline. Second, we match people up with middle management jobs. And, third, we help them move up to higher levels."
To achieve these goals, the institute runs a summer internship program, matches job candidates with corporate mentors, and helps healthcare companies set up their own diversity programs.
