Colorado Hospital Alliance--Roman Catholic & Seventh-day Adventist!
Colorado Hospital Alliance
Roman Catholic & Seventh-day Adventist
"A Report"
Notation: Elder Tom Mostert, President of the Pacific Union Conference, has informed me that the Colorado hospital alliance with the Catholics has been disolved. But it should never have been enterred into the first place.
Ron Beaulieu
Neil C. Livingston
"Hospital Alliance Explored," the heading of an article in the January 13, 1995, Denver Post, business section, stated. (Judith Graham, staff Business Writer, The Denver Post, January 13, 1995, p. 1C). "Provenant-Adventist, May Become Partners," was the heading of the sub-title to the article.
Provenant is Colorado's second largest hospital system and is owned by the Sister of Charity Health Systems, Inc., of Cincinnati, Ohio. This Care System is so closely allied to the Vatican, that any major decision involving full merger would have to be given prior approval by the Pope.
William Grotheer, Watchman, What of the Night, "Special Report" 95 (1), p. 1).
The WWN Special Report, stated further that, "The Adventist partner in the proposed `Strategic Alliance' is Rocky Mountain Adventist Health Care (RMAH), a Colorado nonprofit organization operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church." (ibid., WWN, 95 (1), page 1).
Six days after the Denver Post article, Charles Sandefur, the President of the Colorado Conference, and Chairman of the RAMH Board, issued a memo to the Conference in which he tried to explain the reasons for the proposed merger:
Some of you have already read in the paper that last Thursday, the day after our Pastors (sic) retreat, Rocky Mountain Adventist Health Care (Porter, Littleton and Avista Hospitals) announced that it is exploring the possibility of some sort of strategic relationship with the Provenant Health System (St. Anthony's Central, St. Anthony's North, and Mercy Hospitals). That means for the next 90 days we have committed to seeing if we can work together with Provenant in ways that can cut costs, improve service to the community and, most important, preserve and enhance the distinctive mission and identity of our Adventist mission and identity by retaining sole ownership of our current hospitals.
Charles Sandefur, President, Colorado Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Conference Memo, January 19, 1995. (emphasis supplied).
"Preserve and enhance the distinctive mission and identity of our Adventist mission and identity," by working "together" with the Papacy? Are you kidding me? Have we forgotten the counsel give through Ellen White? Note the clear counsel of the Jesus:
The Lord has repeatedly instructed me to say to His people that they are not to bind up with the world in business partnerships of any kind, and especially in so important a matter as the establishment of a sanitarium [hospital]. Believers and unbelievers, serving two masters, cannot properly be linked together in the Lord's work. "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" God forbids His people to unite with unbelievers in the building up of His institutions.
Arthur L. White, "Meeting Crises in Colorado," Ellen G. White, The Later Elmshaven Years, Vol. 6, 1905-1915 (page 42) (emphasis supplied).
Is it not in the providence of the Lord that the instruction given Ellen White on this important subject was given directly for Health Institutions in Colorado! Amazing! The message then given forbid "binding up with the world in business." Imagine what counsel Ellen White would give on binding up our health institutions with, not just the world, but with the Papacy! And "especially in so important a matter as the establishment of a sanitarium [hospital]." The bottom line is that, "God forbids His people to unite with unbelievers in the building up of His institutions." Would not this proposal to a "Strategic Alliance" be a building up of the Rocky Mountain Adventist Health Care (RMAH) System? Do our leaders care anymore what the Lord has counseled through the Spirit of Prophecy?
UPDATE:
TWO OF COLORADO'S LARGEST HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS FORM SINGLE ORGANIZATION:,--Denver, Colorado, December 14, 1995. Two of Colorado's largest health care providers have finalized an agreement to form a single management company, which will create Colorado's largest provider of integrated health services. With the partnership, the new organization will become one of Colorado's largest health care systems and employers with $1.3 billion in combined gross revenues and approximately 12,000 employees statewide.
The announcement made at a news conference today held by PorterCare Adventist Health System and Sister of Charity Health Services Colorado, both non-profit health care systems, will consolidate each system's operating and management structures and income statements. The new organization will manage the assets of both systems. The new organization is expected to take effect early 1996, following standard regulatory reviews.
Purpose of the new management company is to: extend to the community each system's mission of service; expand the continuum of integrated health care, providing access for all Colorado; and to create the organization of choice for physician partners and third-party payers (health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations and government entities).
The new organization will be a unique organization in the United States which financially combines two separate Christian health care systems in this manner. The distinction between this organization and other health care systems in Colorado is its focus on community health and wellness and a full continuum of care--not just sick care. It is also focused on value and community mission, on quality and service in the most cost-effective manner, Also, as a non-profit organization, it is committed to a mission of community service, not to enhancing stockholder profits.
As part of the agreement, each system will retain its own distinctive identity, beliefs, and mission, but will join forces to provide integrated health care throughout the state. A name for the new organization is in development and will be announced when a decision is made.
Factors that brought these systems together include common beliefs of the importance of physician partnerships; community service as non-profit organizations; shared values of health care as mission derived from a common Christian heritage; and cost reduction and operational efficiencies that will be provided through a single management company. Both systems are sound Colorado health care providers and each has deep historic roots in the community dating back more than 100 years.
"PorterCare Adventist Health System facilities will continue to be Adventist and Sisters of Charity Health Services Colorado facilities will continue to be Catholic," said Sisnara.
The organization will be governed by a board of directors who represent both PorterCare Adventist Health System and Sister of Charity Health Services Colorado. Sisnara will serve as chief executive officer. The balance of the management team will be announced over the next few months along with the final business and organization plans.
Louisville, [CO] Times, December 16, 1995 (page 10).
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Additional Ellen White on Uniting With Unbelievers in Business and/or Medical Work by Ron Beaulieu
"I see now, as ever I have, the danger of binding up in connection with, or in association in labor, with worldlings, professors or nonprofessors, who are in opposition to our faith, and who have no faith in the testimonies of reproof which the Lord sends. Not the least good can come of such combination, or marriage, in BUSINESS, believers with UNBELIEVERS.There can be in this our work no more combination than oil can mix with water. Here is where the delusion and deception have come in. The world has been placed in front to carry out the workings of the enemy by his own subjects, the children of disobedience, and the children of God have been belittled, suspicioned, accused, and defamed by the agents of the wicked one." E.G. White, Manuscript Releases Volume Eighteen, p. 1338-1.
The above statement makes it plain that by unbelievers, Ellen White means those who are in opposition to (are not members) of our faith and who do not believe in the Testimonies.
"You are not to unite with unbelievers in medical work." Medical Ministry, p. 44.
"Any connection with infidels and unbelievers which would identify us with them is FORBIDDEN by the Word. We are to come out from them and be separate. In NO CASE are we to link ourselves with them in their plans or work....Acts of dishonesty in business deal, with believers our unbelievers should be reproved; and if they give no evidence of reformation, come out from among them and be separate." E.G. White, Fundamentals of Education, p. 482.
It is not only a dishonesty in business deal for the church to be linked with Catholics who are in opposition to our faith, and who have no faith in the testimonies of reproof which the Lord sends. It is a total violation of Isaiah 8:9-20.
"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak [and act]not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isaiah 8:20.
We came out from fallen churches in 1844, because they are considered unbelievers. Any Association, Council, Girding or Confederacy with them is strictly forbidden by the Word, and this is why the church will be broken in pieces in another end-time fulfillment of Ezekiel 9, as Ellen White, Ezekile 5:9 and Matthew 24:21, attest. Ellen White says that the entire chapter of Matthew 24 applies, Desire of Ages, p. 628. All of these references testify to the destruction of Jerusalem, the SDA church, in an end-time setting, after a small number remnant escape, Ezekiel 5:1-3, and Isaiah 37:31,32, which Ellen White says was written more for us than the Jews of old.
Ron Beaulieu
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