Bon Secours buyers 'unlikely' to keep Catholic identity
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 23, 2007
Detroit — Chances of Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe retaining its Catholic identity under a new owner are "unlikely," said hospital spokeswoman Cande Tschetter on Monday.
The Maryland-based Sisters of Bon Secours Healthcare Corp. want to divest themselves of their 70-percent interest in Bon Secours Cottage Health Services, which operates Bon Secours and nearby Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe Farms.
The remaining 30- percent owner is Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System Inc., which owned the smaller Cottage Hospital before the two institutions came together in a joint venture in 1998.
The only way Bon Secours' Catholic identity could be maintained would be if a Catholic hospital system should emerge as the winning bidder, but Tschetter would not say whether either of the two Catholic hospital operators in the metro Detroit area — the St. John Health System, owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Nazareth, or that of the Sisters of Mercy – are even among the five bidders who submitted offers by the Jan. 23 deadline.
She would only say the Sisters of Bon Secours are in the "due diligence" phase of considering bids, and that an answer is expected by June 23.
But published reports in the Detroit Free Press have identified Warren-based St. John Health System as one of the bidders, with the others being Henry Ford Health System, Detroit; Oakwood Healthcare System, Dearborn; Beaumont Hospitals, Royal Oak; and Detroit Medical Center, Detroit.
The decision by the sponsoring religious community to divest itself of its Grosse Pointe properties came after several years of financial losses.
The Sisters of Bon Secours' local healthcare ministry began in 1909, when five sisters arrived from Baltimore and began to visit sick and indigent persons in their homes to provide nursing services. The congregation built a new convent on McClellan near Gratiot (near Nativity of Our Lord Parish) in 1911 to serve as their base of operations.
In 1924, a farmhouse and four-acre lot in Grosse Pointe was purchased with the idea of eventually building a hospital. On Dec. 7, 1941 — the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that began World War II — the cornerstone was laid for a new building for the convalescent home they had been operating in the farmhouse. That new building would eventually grow to become a full-fledged hospital by January 1945.
Cottage Hospital grew from a Mutual Aid Society founded to assist local families in 1912. During the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, the society tried to cope with the nearly 600 cases of the disease in what was then Grosse Pointe Township. They decided a hospital was needed, and Cottage Hospital opened in March 1919. It became affiliated with Henry Ford Health System in January 1986.
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