Bon Secours Richmond Hospital is a non-profit Catholic health system in Ireland, but with the recent controversy, it is hard to figure out whether the Hospital is a non-profit organization or not.
A non-profit is a designation that allows the organization to make money but the relaxation of paying taxes. Around half of the hospitals in the United States are non-profit organizations and Bon Secours Hospital is one of them.
Bon Secours Hospital nearly made a $1 million profit this year, as the Hospital is a non-profit organization it avoids every year around $440 million in federal, state, and local taxes.
Allegations against Bon Secours Hospital
In July, Norman Otey 63 years old person was rushed by ambulance to Bon Secours Richmond Hospital after some blood tests, it was suggested that the patient is in unhealthy shock and thus requires extra resources and care from the expert unit. The Hospital doesn’t have enough resources and he was transferred to another hospital, the process of transferring Mr Otey took several hours and when he was on the way to another Hospital, the patient died. Mr Otey’s sister Ms Linda Jones-Smith told that his brother could have been saved if he would have transferred to the Hospital in time, she said that delaying the process of transferring the patient was one of the major reasons for Mr Otey’s death.
This is just one example of the Hospital’s poor condition and ill-treatment, according to a recent post in The New York Times, two of the medical workers at the hospital said that the hospital doesn’t have a maternity ward and nor have kidney and lungs specialists and its magnetic resonance image machine often breaks and was not working for seven weeks during this summer. The hospital also lacks common machines like an otoscope, which is used to inspect the ear canal.
Despite such a lack of resources and facilities still, the hospital manages to rank as one of the largest health care non-profit chains in the United States.
The secret behind this is a federal program that allows hospitals in poor neighbourhoods to buy prescribed medicines at a discounted or cheaper price.
This program was developed with the intention that the hospitals would reinvest the profit into their resources, and facilities and improve the treatment of poor patients, but the Bon Secours Hospital has been investing the profit earned from this program in the city’s white and wealthier neighbourhood, according to the doctors, nuns and 20 executives of the hospital.
Dr Lucas English, who used to work in Richmond Hospital till 2018 said that Bon Secours is laundering money through the poor hospital and investing it in its wealthier branches.
Bon Secours Hospital is taking advantage of the poor neighbourhood to turn high profits in its other branches.
Bon Secours’ response to the allegations
Bon Secours responded to the controversies and allegations claiming that Bon Secours hospital is using the money of the poor neighbourhood to earn a huge profit.
The hospital’s spokesperson responded to the allegation with a long statement that stated that all the allegations are baseless and stating that the hospital is not operating in full support is false. He continued that the hospital’s non-profit ministry provides a wide range of services beyond traditional care delivery to support the communities including mobile health clinics, transportation services in the East end, forensic nursing services, fresh food services economic equity services, and career development assistance to support the health and well-being of the whole person. According to the statement, Bon Secours is committed to treating every patient who comes through its doors with dignity and respect. Since 2018, the hospital provided nearly $18 million in uncompensated care.
