Mercy Health provides care for people at every age and stage of life.
We’re dedicated to providing the best possible care in our hospitals, clinics, nurseries, aged care homes and the community.
Mercy Health offers acute and subacute hospital care, aged care, mental health programs, specialist women’s healthcare, early parenting services, palliative care, home and community care, and training and development for our staff. We are pioneering research across a range of clinical areas and taking a lead in education activities, to improve the way we deliver care and support for people in need.
As a Catholic provider of care we value the dignity of life from conception to death. In addition to the many services we provide, there are some that we don’t. Like most care providers in public health and aged care, there are services we are not equipped to provide. In addition to those practical limits of care there are two areas where, for moral reasons, we do not provide some services: being women’s health and end of life care.
We provide a comprehensive and highly regarded range of women’s health, pregnancy and birthing services. We do not provide termination of pregnancy or direct contraceptive procedures.
We are committed to excellent end of life and palliative care which includes effective symptom and pain management and withdrawing life prolonging treatments when they are medically futile or overly burdensome or when a person wants them withdrawn. We will neither provide nor facilitate Voluntary Assisted Dying as prescribed by Victorian Legislation.
Our approach is in accordance with the Hippocratic tradition of medicine: When our patients are dying, we assist them to die in comfort and with dignity. We aim to do no harm, to relieve pain, to provide compassionate care for the whole person and to never abandon those in our care.