Journal of Sacred Work

   What does it mean for a charity or hospital to carry a faith-based name? When you enter a hospital that has a cross on the building or a Star of David in the lobby, what do you expect? When you enter a charity called St. Vincent’s or Sisters of Mercy or Methodist, is it fair for you to anticipate a higher standard of loving care? A standard grounded in the love of Jesus?

   Faith-based hospitals were founded in a loving tradition that includes the stunning beauty of the Sermon on the Mount and all the great parables including the story of the Good Samaritan – offered by Jesus as a penultimate example of how we may travel the pathway to heaven by showing mercy toward others. Sadly, for many so-called charities, a religious name has become simply a quaint artifact that no longer means what it once signified. The terrible phrase "customer service" has become a mockery of true loving care.

   Consider the for-profit foundation of "customer service." By its nature, customer service calls employees to pretend to like customers so they’ll come back and buy more products. Is that the basis on which charites were founded and are grounded today? Customer service language is an embarrassment to non-profits and should be discarded immediately. More important, the intention beneath it must be completely re-thought… (*note: More Comments (12) were received on this meditaion than any other yet posted!)…

   The standard of compassion should be high for all charities, faith-based or not since all claim to offer caring as well as curing.

   The crisis in American healthcare is not about curing, it’s about healing. It’s about the failure of loving care from the front desk to the final encounter. The medical-industrial complex has shoved loving care to the side. It’s the responsibility of leaders, board members, mission officers and doctors to insist that loving care be returned to the center of healing. Yes. This is your wake-up call. 

  The time has come for hospitals and charities to go deeper than superficial smile campaigns and horribly-named “customer service” nonsense borrowed from the world of retail stores. Look at your mission statement. Are you who you say you are?

   Walk on down to the Emergency Room and see if loving service is represented in the waiting area. Go up on the hallway outside radiology and see if you discover a train of stretcher-bound patients lying unattended as they stare up at a row of fluorescent lights. Go to a local clinic for the poor and see if you see human beings being sorted like cattle by underpaid and poorly-led staff.

   Patients with cancer, women in labor, children with leukemia, women who have been raped – These suffering beings do NOT want customer service. They want and deserve something much deeper. They want Loving Service from caregivers dedicated to healing. And so many of America’s hospitals and charities are failing the test.

   Three decades of charity experience advise me that, in general, most hospitals that claim a faith base demonstrate no meaningful difference in the quality of loving care from hospitals that are for- profit or government supported. This is not only tragic, it’s a fraud on the public. If your building carries a cross and you’re not willing to commit to loving service in the Christian tradition, than you should take the cross down and drop the religious name from your organization.

   When are America’s faith-based hospitals and charities going to face the fact that they are living a lie? Many Catholic hospitals and a few Protestant ones are making a sincere effort to reverse this problem. But often, the effort is limited to a group of committed but aging sisters, a handful of well meaning but ineffective ministers or a small band of mission officers who’s work is given polite attention and then dismissed in favor of the “important” part of the agenda – the financial performance of the hospital or, at best, a focus on continuous efficiency that ignores compassion.

   As a Protestant who headed four different faith-based hospitals, I am disappointed at the long list of charities with Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopal in their name who care very little for the religious roots or mission of their organization. Of course, I’m also disappointed in myself for not doing even more to make our mission come true when I had the chance as a hospital system CEO. We succeeded better than most, but there is so much more to do.

   Compassion? Loving Care? It’s gotten so bad that “caring” in the mission statement has become a synonym for “Who Cares?” The answer is that most CEOs have no real interest in loving care. The latest customer service effort or smile campaign seems adequate because it’s easy. But these CEOs have no desire to go deeper. They think there’s no money in it and no convincing scientific evidence that loving care impacts organizational excellence.

   And the board and medical staff are often even less interested.

   As a long time hospital leader, I can tell you that among the culprits are board members who fail to hold CEOs accountable for mission. CEOs report to the board. If the board doesn’t care, some CEO’s think, then why should I?

   Some organizations are doing a wonderful job. For example, most, but not all, non-profit hospices like Alive Hospice in Nashville (not faith-based) and Hospice at Riverside in Columbus (faith-based) do a marvelous job of living out their missions. Some small charities like Magdalene and Siloam and Oasis in Nashville do a far superior job to large non-profits that operate like bureaucracies instead of caring communities. 

   A handful of charities like the fourteen-hospital St. Joseph Health System (faith-based) and Parrish Medical (non-faith based but also non-profit.) and some of the hospitals in the large Catholic Health West system; the Mountain States Health System, St. Charles in Bend, Oregon and Beth Israel-Deaconess in Boston are leading the new Loving care revolution. They are pioneers in re-establishing the value of mission. But they are still in the minority.

 The train of mission accountability is about to leave the station and the ethical hospitals are climbing on board. Whether it’s a probing state attorney general or persistent mission officers like Sister Marie Moore at Lourdes Hospital in Kentucky, or Nancy Lee at St. Joseph Health System, or Johnnette Gindling at Wuesthoff Health System, or committed CEOs like Deborah Proctor, head of the entire St. Joe’s Health System, or CEO’s in her system like Larry Ainsworth at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California, and Jason Barker at St. Mary’s: and there are pioneers like George Mikitarian at Parrish and Laurie Eberst at Mercy Gilbert in Arizona, and CNOs like Tejuana Holmes at Baptist in Nashville, Katie Skelton at St. Joe’s and Mary Ann Wicox at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, more and more leaders are insisting that their staff partners live the true charity mission of their organization.   

   Disturbingly, but not surprisingly, an increasing number of government officials want to know why some hospitals and charities are non-profit and non-tax paying when they’re running like big companies and treat their patients and visitors no differently than a bunch of second rate consumers. If the charities are not demonstrating charity (originally defined as love), why are they free of taxes?

 Conscientious and courageous mission officers together with an increasing number of non-profit CEOs are seeing the handwriting on the wall. Either become a true example of loving care or take down the cross and start paying taxes.

There are answers to all of this.

1. Break through the mediocrity of the status quo and make your mission come true.
2. If you have a program called "Customer Service" you’re behind the times and out of touch with Mission. Find a new name and a deeper approach. If you don’t like Loving Service, call it Mission service, or Quality Service or Patient-Centered Care. You’re a charity, not a department store. If you use the Customer Service name, you’re at risk for being dismissed, understandably, as a trivial part of the organization.
3. Re-order the leadership and board agenda – the old one in which money counts and mission is a side point needs to go. Mission should weave through the entire agenda.
4. Look at the mission statement, then look in the mirror and ask the question: Are we who we say we are? Are we among those that are part of an organization that is living a lie? Can your organization pass The Mother Test – the one that asks whether you would feel comfortable if you own mother was a patient or client at your organization?
5. Launch an organization-wide overhaul that will focus on mission first. You don’t need to start from scratch. The organizations mentioned above are engaged in serious mission work. It’s okay to copy from them. Although the Baptist Healing Trust in Nashville offers a full range of services to launch this kind of overhaul, you don’t need to turn to us unless you’re ready for real change. Keep checking this Journal and our website: www.baptisthealingtrust.org for regular updates on what you can do to create a culture of loving care. 
6. Be Persistent – It takes years to turn around some of the giant organizations that have been stuck in mediocrity for years. Start now and stick with it.
7. Decisiveness: The Dock & the Boat: As anyone who has tried it knows, it’s hard to stand long with one foot on the boat and the other on the dock.Get all your leadership on board the boat or tell them it’s time to leave. This means being respectful, not brutal. But it also means being firm and disciplined. This is a revolution, not a small incremental change.

The main thing is to wake up to the responsibility you have to advance loving care in your charitable organization. It’s up to you to do your part to create a culture where you would be comfortable if a loved one came for care and you could rest easy knowing the organization would truly deliver on the promise of its mission.

Give your organization The Mother Test. If you Mom or someone else you loved came to your place for help, would you feel confident she would be treated with compassion, competence and respect? If not, than you have failed your Mission ‘s Mother Test. Wake up. Someone’s mother is coming through the door right now in need of your organization’s help. Will she or he be treated with love by everyone they encounter? As a leader or other caregiver, what are you going to do?

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*this essay is the personal opinion of the author, Erie Chapman