Nonprofit Hospitals and Health Systems Are Essential for Houston’s Health

Written by David L. Callender, MD, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System

Memorial Hermann Health System’s role as a nonprofit health system extends well beyond our hospital and clinic walls, reaching deep into our communities to improve care and health outcomes across the region.

We do more than critical trauma care and complex surgeries. More than cancer treatment, primary and neonatal care.

There is no better way to illustrate our expanded role than our new partnership with Aldine Independent School District, thanks to a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, to develop a career-technical educational high school. Announced earlier this year, the partnership recognizes how we can leverage our longstanding work in the community to grow the health care workforce and provide a pathway to well-paying health care careers.

As a nonprofit health system, Memorial Hermann is uniquely positioned to build and support the partnership that will reap long-term benefits for students, their families, the region’s health care organizations and economy, and support access to timely, high-quality care for all Houstonians.

We are not accountable to shareholders or individual owners. Rather, we are overseen by a board of local leaders and accountable to our community. That means we have a long-term vision and mission to create and sustain healthy communities in Greater Houston today and for future generations. That’s a different decision-making guidepost than a quarterly earnings report.

Because we are not accountable to shareholders who typically value short-term returns, we can make longer-term investments to improve our community’s health and maintain services that may not be profitable, like labor and delivery, trauma response, and Memorial Hermann Life Flight®  – a critical care air medical transport service provided as a community service by Memorial Hermann. These medical services are essential for our community, and we provide them because the health of our community depends on them.

Memorial Hermann believes we have a responsibility and opportunity to help lead the transformation of health care in our region. That transformation begins with how we think about the delivery of high-value care that focuses on attaining and maintaining good health, beyond just the delivery of exceptional medical care.

Our operating funds are returned to our workforce and to the community in the form of programs and services to meet identified local needs. For the latter, in fiscal year 2023, Memorial Hermann contributed $470 million in community benefit.

This includes free or discounted care to individuals unable to pay as well as innovative programs like our school-based health centers; education and training for the next generation of physicians and other clinicians; research; and nearly 140 partnerships with region-area food banks, faith-based organizations and other nonprofit entities to address some of the most pressing social issues facing our communities, including food and housing insecurity, senior loneliness, access to safe and clean outdoor spaces, and timely access to mental health care.

We also know that attaining and maintaining good health goes beyond our walls, which means we pay attention to the factors and forces known to be responsible for 80 to 90% of health status and outcomes: among them, lack of access to nutritious food, reliable transportation, affordable housing, education and employment opportunities, and clean air and water.

We cannot solve these problems alone, and we cannot solve them by only providing medical care to those who come to us. We solve them by partnering, and we solve them by bringing our innovative mindset and programming to people where they live, work and play. That’s what drives Memorial Hermann to seek out and work with partners, like Aldine ISD and Bloomberg Philanthropies, that share our goal of creating a healthier Houston, not just for today, but for tomorrow and into the next decade and beyond.

Without strong nonprofit, community-oriented hospitals and health systems, we believe the fabric of our community would be thinner. While Greater Houston would still have medical care, the available services would be fewer, access to care would be diminished, health disparities would be greater and the journey to create health care value would be longer.

Memorial Hermann is proud to be a nonprofit, community-owned health system with a more than 116-year legacy of local care, service and governance. Partnering with forward-thinking organizations that also care deeply about the health of the region we all call home is a privilege, and it’s a strategy we pursue intentionally to achieve our vision of creating healthier communities, now and for generations to come.