Patient Views on Religious Institutional Health Care

Abstract

The nature of US health care is shifting, in part because of the growing religious ownership sector. As of 2016, 18.5% of hospitals were religiously affiliated: 9.4% were Catholic-owned nonprofit hospitals, 5.1% were Catholic-affiliated hospitals, and 4.0% were other religious nonprofit hospitals.¹ Catholic hospitals in particular have demonstrated significant growth recently; between 2001 and 2016, the number of acute care hospitals that were Catholic owned or affiliated grew by 22%, while the overall number of acute care hospitals decreased by 6% and the number of other nonprofit religious hospitals decreased by 38.3%.¹ In 2016, 10 of the top 25 health care systems were Catholic sponsored.¹ Almost half (46%) of all US Catholic hospitals are located in the Midwest,² and 46 Catholic hospitals are designated as sole community hospitals because of their remote location from other major medical centers.¹