Dear Community:
More than a century ago, our founders Dr. Olaf Sand and Dr. Nils Tronnes identified a community need, and collaborated with others to meet those needs. St. Lukes Hospital was opened in 1908. 100 years later, MeritCare Health System provided $61 million in programs, community care and other traditional medicine through its Mission and Community Benefit work.
Today, we are building on the legacy by developing partnerships with our community members. We may help a mother experiencing a high risk pregnancy to receive health education and medical interventions through our shelter nurse program, or it may be our work with an obese child, providing medical nutrition therapy and exercise physiology conveniently at the child’s school. Our Community Benefit stories are numerous and heartwarming. Our associates are caring and compassionate experts who are best at caring for our communities and the needs of others. Because of who we are and what we value we are making a difference to the communities we serve and to each other.
Because of our Mission and Community Benefit, we are focusing our attention on the unmet needs of our communities, as we extend our core values into our mission work throughout the local and regional communities. Our priority areas of focus to address the unmet needs in our communities include the following Board of Trustees endorsed priorities:
- Disease management
- Mental Health
- Childhood Obesity
- Family Healthcare Center Support
- Aging Services
It is our privilege and responsibility to improve the health and quality of life of the people we serve. We are guided by our charitable purpose, and 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.
Our 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.
Sincerely,
Roger Gilbertson, M.D.
President and CEO, MeritCare Health System