Benedictine Health Center Revenue and Competitors

In the late 1880s, Duluth, Minn., was a booming semi-wilderness community with shipping, mining and logging operations expanding rapidly. In February 1888, Mother Scholastica Kerst and her blood sister, Sister Alexia Kerst, led a small group of Benedictine Sisters from St. Joseph, Minn., to Duluth to establish St. Mary's Hospital. In 1892, Mother Scholastica established a new Duluth Benedictine community that assumed sponsorship of St. Mary's Hospital. From there, the Benedictine Sisters went on to launch a health care ministry that built hospitals across northern Minnesota and sponsored new facilities in other area communities. These innovative and resourceful Sisters began one of the first health maintenance organizations, ensuring revenue for their ministry by offering access to Benedictine hospitals for the price of an annual ticket. Sr. Amata Mackett, known as the Sister Lumberjack, traveled across northern Minnesota offering the tickets to the lumberjacks and later the miners. The funds raised were used to not only support the existing ministry, but to grow and expand the health care services available in the region. As the years progressed, changes in the health care marketplace and the monastery prompted a change in the health care ministry. In 1985, the Benedictine Health System was created to further the Sisters' ministry, uphold the Sisters' mission and steward the Sisters' resources. Today, the Benedictine Health System and its Participating Organizations-hospitals, nursing homes, independent and assisted living facilities-uphold the original mission of the Sisters of caring for others as Christ.