Dr. Richard Grossman is the longest serving physician with privileges at Mercy Regional Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Durango, run by Englewood, CO’s Catholic Health Initiatives.
Dr. Grossman is at his hospital office one day per week. When he’s not there, he spends 1-2 days per week working at the local Planned Parenthood as their abortionist. If that isn’t enough, the Planned Parenthood in Durango is the only one providing surgical abortions within a 200 mile radius.
Worse still, Live Action did a telephone sting of Grossman’s office in the hospital and actually solicited an abortion referral from within Mercy with absolute ease. See the video:
“Personally, I believe in the strength, intellect and fortitude of women. When a woman says a fetus is a person, I think it is one. I believe the woman empowers the fetus,” Grossman is quoted as saying in a Durango Herald article on last year’s protest.
Also from the article:
Grossman, 67, was approved by the hospital’s board of directors to practice medicine at the hospital in 1976. Today, he is the hospital’s longest-serving physician.
He was at work in the hospital during the protest.
In a statement, Mercy spokesman Nathan Schmidt said abortions are not performed at the hospital and that it neither employs nor compensates Grossman.
“Dr. Richard Grossman is a member of the medical staff at Mercy Regional Medical Center. Being a member of the hospital’s staff does not constitute employment,” Schmidt said.
Mercy’s physician-credentialing and privileging practices are consistent with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Schmidt said.
Mercy is part of Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s third-largest Roman Catholic health-care system, headquartered in Denver. It was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1882.
There is a reason why physicians gain “privileges” to practice medicine at a given hospital, and not mere “permission.” Having an MD, or DO does not constitute an automatic prerogative. The character of the physician, as written in the history of how they practice medicine, factors into whether or not a physician is deemed worthy of practicing at the hospital in question.
In that light, it is rather disingenuous of the hospital to assert that Grossman is not an employee. The fact of the matter is that the man who spends as much, if not more time aborting babies at Planned Parenthood as he does delivering babies at Mercy (by his secretary’s own admission in the above video), has been granted the PRIVILEGE of practicing medicine at a Catholic Hospital. Moreover, he is being given a level of social/professional recognition by elements within the Church that he does not deserve, and which no official arm of the institutional Church has a right to give-especially when abortion referrals are coming from his office within the hospital.
Simply put, his privileges at Mercy are tantamount to approving his murder of children at Planned Parenthood, as they are not seen as a moral or ethical impediment to gaining privileges at Mercy.
Next Thursday there will be another protest at the Hospital. It must be made perfectly clear to the officials at Mercy and the Diocese of Pueblo that Grossman’s continued presence is intolerable. He must be confronted and forced to choose. We do him no service in charity by allowing him to live in both worlds.
Folks should contact protest organizer, Daniel Anguis, President of LifeGuard at 970-385-8451.
We should also call the following folks and demand some positive action:
Mercy Regional Medical Center 970-247-4311
Catholic Health Initiatives 303-298-9100
Catholic Diocese of Pueblo 719-544-9861
Catholic Archdiocese of Denver 303-715-3129
More to come on this…
I do not believe hospitals in general, including Catholic hospitals, can legally control the medical practice of their physicians outside the hospital premises. Hospital bylaws usually state that physicians can lose privileges for felonies or incompetence, and there is a typically a due process of peers, not administrators or diocesan officials. The Diocese of Pueblo cannot do much about this except declare that the hospital is not Catholic if abortion or other activities take place there. I am not sure the medical staff office can even legally ask if a physician performs abortions when he or she is applying for privileges.
I am sure most if not all of the primary care physicians with privileges in this hospital prescribe contraception and obgyn’s do sterilizations. This would be an issue if these practices were done in the hospital. There are only a couple hundred physicians in the USA who follow the Catholic directives. I am confident most if not all Catholic hospitals in the high abortion regions on the west and east coasts have abortion performing physicians on their hospital staffs. There is nothing unique about the situation of this doctor.
I think energy would be better spent getting the hospital to develop or support a genuinely Catholic medical practice in their area such as Tepeyac in Virginia, COLFS in San Diego or the John Paul II Center in Austin.
Maybe I am too jaded about this protest, but i don’t think it is likely to go anywhere.
[…] Nadal at Coming Home shares his thoughts on the Catholic hospital in CO which refuses to disassociate itself from Dr. […]
There is an obvious conflict. A Catholic hospital should not have an abortionist with privileges. The privileges should be terminated immediately. By Dr. Grossman’s comments on women “empowering the fetus” thus determining whether the fetus is a person it is clear that not only has Dr. Grossman lost his moral compass but that he has also lost his mind.
[…] Dr. Gerard M. Nadal via his blog Coming Home. Republished with […]
[…] Dr. Gerard M. Nadal around his blog Coming Home. Republished with […]
[…] Dr. Gerard M. Nadal around his blog Coming Home. Republished with […]