When Vicki Sirockman worked at Children's Home of Pittsburgh, she recalled that ambulance drivers sometimes went out of their way to take patients to Mercy Hospital "because they thought they'd be treated better there."

"I think it was because it was a Catholic hospital and people were taught to treat people kindly," said Ms. Sirockman, now executive director of Lydia's Place in Uptown. "There's still a climate of caring that you feel when you go in there."

Ms. Sirockman and other social service providers wondered yesterday whether Mercy's reputation for kindness and care would survive its merger with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Theresa Chalich worked at Homestead's Rainbow Health Center during the 1990s. Mercy wasn't the closest hospital to send patients, she said, but it was the best hospital.

"It was just knowing that people would walk through the doors" and be taken care of, said Ms. Chalich, a registered nurse who now is coordinator of the mental health clinic at Bethlehem Haven women's shelter, Uptown. "I call it 'Mercy care.' "

While the proximity of the shelter to Mercy is convenient, Ms. Chalich said it's not the primary reason clients are sent there.

"You know that they will be safe regardless of insurance coverage," she said. "My first thought [about the merger] was, 'Uh, oh. There goes the charity care.' "

Officials from both hospitals have vowed that there will be no reduction in charity care at Mercy.

The hospital will continue as a Catholic hospital even though UPMC will manage it. The 19 Sisters of Mercy employed or volunteering at the hospital are expected to continue their work, officials have said.

No programs and services provided by Mercy Behavioral Health, which has the largest contract with Allegheny County of any mental health organization, will be affected, a spokeswoman said.

Nevertheless, said Dr. Nancy Brent, who recently left her position as medical director of the Maternal-Infant Lactation Center at Mercy Hospital to work with the Breastfeeding Center of Pittsburgh, Mercy was a rare facility, one that lived up to its motto of "A Touch of Mercy."

"I felt that through the years, 20 years now, they really did live up to that," Dr. Brent said. "The way they treated their employees was unique. Their free care policy, its openness, was reflected in the patients. We saw a lot of foreign students, who didn't have insurance."

She recalled one pediatric resident, when Sister Joanne Marie Andiorio was chief executive officer, who learned that his sister in Africa had died of tuberculosis and left two daughters sick and in need of help. The hospital paid for him to take supplies to Africa and stay for a week while the girls recovered enough to travel to Pittsburgh. Then, Dr. Brent said, the girls were treated here and the resident given time off to take care of them.

"The hospital paid for everything," Dr. Brent said. "It was a genuinely nice thing to do."