Six Shriners hospitals around the country could have a better idea of their fate after July 5, when Shriners will meet at their national convention to vote on major restructuring.
The hospitals, which provide free care to children who have suffered burns or who need orthopedic, spinal cord or cleft lip and palate care, charge nothing and don’t even have billing departments. But the Shriners who have funded them are a dying breed and are now dealing with the difficulty of raising public contributions and an endowment that has dropped from $8.5 billion to $5.2 billion throughout the past year.
The hospitals that may close are located in Springfield, Mass., Shreveport, La.; Erie, Pa.; Greenville, S.C.; Spokane, Wash.; and Galveston, Texas.
See a list of Shriners hospitals and the special care each offers.
Poynter’s St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported that all 22 Shriners hospitals could be broke in five to seven years if their financial situation doesn’t improve:
“Medicine also headed in another direction. Costs of technology soared. The rods and hardware used to straighten the spine of a single child with scoliosis can cost $50,000. Doctors who once referred children to Shriners hospitals fell under the domain of managed-care networks. A trend toward outpatient care left hospital beds empty. The whole concept of free care got fuzzy. Did ‘free’ mean not as good?”
CNN said there are some proposals to cut spending systemwide rather than close hospitals:
“‘If we do nothing, every hospital would have to cut 25 to 30 percent from their budgets, which in effect would shut about six of them anyway, because they couldn’t give the services they’ve been giving,’ [Ralph Semb, president and CEO of Shriners Hospitals] said.
“Still, the hospitals can’t close without consent of the fraternity’s membership. Two-thirds of the roughly 1,400 representatives at the group’s July 6-8 Imperial Council Session in San Antonio, Texas, would have to vote for it.
“History shows that might be difficult. Members, some of whom transport children to hospitals themselves, killed a 2003 proposal to close the hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a similar market downturn.
“‘I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think it should happen,’ said Carl V. Nielsen, a 40-year Shriner and a board member for the Minneapolis hospital, which is not on the current possible-closure list. ‘That would leave large areas of the country without a Shriners hospital, and the cost of transportation of the patients back and forth [to the remaining hospitals] would be too great.'”
