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By Rogi Riverstone
All rights reserved
Religious-based hospitals receive over forty-five billion U.S. Taxpayer dollars per yer, according to Merger Watch, a watchdog group that works to protect patents' rights when U.S. hospitals merge.
Patients are discovering they lose reproductive health care services and personal decision-making about end-of-life care when secular community hospitals and clinics merge with religiously-sponsored hospitals.
Low-income women and women of Color tend to depend more on hospitals and hospital outpatient clinics for their health care. They, along with rural women who might not have accessible alternative providers, are disproportionately affected by religious health care restrictions. Almost all Catholic hospitals, for instance, are located in rural areas.
The
results of the survey showed that, among
obstetrician–gynecologists who practice in religiously affiliated
institutions, more than one third have had a conflict with their
institution over religiously-based policies. These conflicts are most
common in Catholic institutions (52%). Few report that their options
for treating ectopic pregnancy are limited by their hospitals (2.5%
at non-Catholic institutions vs. 5.5% at Catholic providers).
Debra
Stulberg, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University
of Chicago Medical School, is lead author of the study. In a news
report by NPR, titled, “When Religious Rules And Women's Health Collide,”
journalist Julie Rovner interviewed Stulberg about specific impact to
women's health.
By Rogi Riverstone
All rights reserved
Religious-based hospitals receive over forty-five billion U.S. Taxpayer dollars per yer, according to Merger Watch, a watchdog group that works to protect patents' rights when U.S. hospitals merge.
Patients are discovering they lose reproductive health care services and personal decision-making about end-of-life care when secular community hospitals and clinics merge with religiously-sponsored hospitals.
Low-income women and women of Color tend to depend more on hospitals and hospital outpatient clinics for their health care. They, along with rural women who might not have accessible alternative providers, are disproportionately affected by religious health care restrictions. Almost all Catholic hospitals, for instance, are located in rural areas.
“Obstetrician–gynecologists,religious institutions, and conflicts regarding patient care policies” is a survey of 1,800 medical professionals. The study, which appears in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Its Objective:
“To
assess how common it is for obstetrician-gynecologists working in
religiously-affiliated hospitals or practices to experience conflict
with those institutions over religiously-based policies for patient
care, and to identify the proportion of obstetrician-gynecologists
who report that their hospitals restrict their options for treating
ectopic pregnancy.”
Stulberg
stated that, in Catholic facilities, restrictions on -- and
prohibitions against -- abortion are the rule, but that it doesn't
end there. Physicians who participated in the study reported to her,
in personal conversations, that, in religiously affiliated hospitals
the most frequent issues arise around birth control and
sterilization, particularly for women who want to be sterilized just
after giving birth.
"Those
are things that most OB-GYNs support giving to women and that they
want to be able to offer to women," Stulberg says. "And
they are completely prohibited at Catholic hospitals."
Women
who undergo Caesarian section, she says, are often forced to go to a
separate hospital and have a second surgery, complete with the
further risk of another round of anesthesia. "It's not medically
good for a woman to have two surgeries when she could have one,"
she says.
Only
2.9 percent of physicians treating ectopic pregnancies face
restrictions from religously-based hospitals; with Catholic
providers, it was 5.5 percent. An ectopic pregnancy occurs outside
the uterus, usually in a Fallopian tube, and is life-threatening to
the mother. While laproscopic surgeries to remove these non-viable pregnancies are
common, a less-invasive drug therapy utilizes Methotrexate, which is
ninety percent effective in qualified cases.
Stulberg
questions whether Methotrexate therapy will face resistance within
religious-based hospitals, swept up with abortion bans.
Stulberg
is aware that the survey results bring up more specific questions
about quality of care in religously-based hospitals and plans for
follow-up research are formulating.
