CHA members vote to give membership study three more years
PHILADELPHIA — At the annual Membership Assembly, CHA-member representatives voted to amend the association's bylaws to allow existing members that have changed or may change their corporate structures — or their successors — to remain eligible for association membership for three years while a study of membership criteria continues.
The amendment passed by an overwhelming majority during the members' meeting June 5 here during the 2012 Catholic Health Assembly.
The bylaw amendment was recommended by a special membership task force, as well as CHA's board of trustees and its Governance Committee. This bylaw change follows last year's approval of a temporary amendment that allowed representative and system participant member organizations that had changed or might change to for-profit status to remain CHA members for fiscal year 2012 while a discernment process determined if membership criteria should be revised.
While the special task force engaged people across the ministry in the discernment process on membership criteria, business models for Catholic health care organizations continued to evolve. The CHA board determined that more time was needed to study the impact of the various changing models on membership criteria, and recommended an approach that would not exclude organizations from membership while the study was under way.
In other business at the meeting, member representatives elected Deborah A. Proctor, president and chief executive of St. Joseph Health, Orange, Calif., to serve as vice chairperson/chairperson-elect of the association board.
Trustees reelected for three-year terms are:
- Joyce C. Dombrouski, chief acute services officer Western Montana Region, Providence Health and Services, Missoula, Mont.
- Sr. Teresa A. Maltby, RSM, corporate member/board member, Presence Health, and chairperson, Health Ministry Council, West Midwest Community of the Sisters of Mercy, Chicago.
- Brian O'Toole, senior vice president, mission and ethics, Mercy, Chesterfield, Mo.
Alan R. Yordy, chair of CHA's Finance Committee, reported that the association is in a positive financial position as it enters the next fiscal year on July 1. Yordy is president and chief mission officer at PeaceHealth in Bellevue, Wash.