Community Benefit At MeritCare
Change text size
The Charitable Purpose of MeritCare Health System
The mission of MeritCare Health System is to improve the health and quality of life for the people we serve.
We are accountable to those we serve for the resources in our trust and for collaboration with others to achieve shared goals in improving health and quality of life of our communities.
Mission Directives
We improve the health and quality of life of all people in the communities we serve by adding value through:
- Extending MeritCare’s medical core into the community, and beyond our internal network
- Identifying unmet community needs, and addressing those health needs identified through assessment of our communities
- Facilitating partnership in the community to maximize resources and reduce duplication in addressing unmet health needs
- Providing education for physicians and health professionals
- Providing (health) education for consumers
- Participating in research that improves patient care
- Provision of coordinated and comprehensive quality health care
- Living a culture of caring
MeritCare was founded on the charitable purpose of caring for all people, regardless of their ability to pay. The promotion of health is one of the purposes of charity law that is deemed beneficial to the community as a whole, even though beneficiaries eligible to benefit from its activities may not include all members of the community.
Charity in its legal sense is divided into four principal segments; trusts for the relief of poverty, trusts for the advancement of education; trusts for the advancement of religion; and trusts for other purposes beneficial to the community (and not falling under any of the preceding segments). At MeritCare, it is our privilege to care for all who are in need of care.