You'll forgive me if I eschew sarcasm for a moment to talk about the impending closure of Shriner's Hospital. This story from last week's Chronicle lays out the problem:
Shriners Hospital for Children-Galveston will suspend operations to cope with a $3 billion shortfall in the Shriners International endowment fund, the organization's president said Tuesday. Shriners is also suspending reconstruction of hospitals in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., said Ralph Semb, president and chief executive officer of Shriners Hospitals for Children.
Semb said the 30-bed hospital in Galveston would not be closed permanently, but that operations would be suspended and an undetermined number of its about 200 employees laid off until financial conditions improved.
"You get to a point where you just can't afford to bleed anymore," Semb said. "We don't want to close anything, but we have to be fiduciarily responsible for the future of this organization."
The economic downturn and plunge in the stock market dramatically slashed the interest payments from the endowment that supports the 22 Shriners hospitals, he said.
The market decline has shrunk the fund to about $5 billion, which is not providing the $850 million needed annually to support the hospitals, Semb said.
All Galveston hospital employees will be paid through March 31, he said.
The hospital is the only pediatric burn center for the Gulf Coast region, including Latin America. It also provides care for spinal injuries and is one of the only places in the U.S. offering clinical services for cleft lip and palates.
Semb can't expect his laid-off employess to sit around until the economy gets better. These are highly trained and experienced people who will find employment elsewhere, meaning they won't necessarily be around when/if the hospital is up and running again. None of which is any help to children requiring ongoing care after suffering what are often horrifying injuries.
There was a meeting between Semb and Shriner's employees yesterday. It apparently didn't go too well:
It was a somber day for hundreds of Shriners Hospital employees and burn patients in Galveston. Many emerged from a nearly two-hour meeting with the CEO of the hospital feeling like they have lost everything, KPRC Local 2 reported Monday.
"They don't care. I'm feeling they don't care about lives or about the kids," said an emotional Diana Salinas, who has worked as a nursing assistant at Shriners for the past two years.
Her daughter was even more upset about the hospital putting so many people out of work after it was devastated by Hurricane Ike.
"I really feel what they're doing is inhumane. They're sort of taking the easy way out, kicking you while you're down," said Cindy Lu Salinas who is a patient care coordinator.
No one with Shriners Hospital would comment, but last week hospital administrator John Swartwout said that the emergency measure was being taken because Shriners had suffered as a result of Hurricane Ike and the downturn in the economy.
[...]
Meanwhile, some young burn patients and their families are trying to plan their next move.Shriners officials have told them they could seek treatment at their facilities in Cincinnati and other cities.
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas is heading to Washington next week, ostensibly to discuss transportation, but also to talk with Texas Congressfolk and Senators Cornyn and Hutchinson about more funding to rebuild.
Aside from calling your elected representatives and leaving a comment, I'm sort of at a loss about what we can do. And while I may not be a big city financial expert, but supporting a place like Shriner's certainly seems like a better use of taxpayer money than funneling more TARP funds to financial institutions that continue to give bonuses to their executives and shore up their market position rather than issue loans.
I’m sure that this is a much worthier cause than a lot of the entries in the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Debt Plan. But… I worked there about 15 years ago. They saw a fair number of kids in the outpatient clinic, but the inpatient section was tiny compared to the amount of resources the hospital took. Part of that was that burn patients are quite resource intensive, but it wasn’t a great layout, either.
And they were rather dependent on UTMB’s plastic surgery program for doctors. It wouldn’t surprise me that with Ike, and UTMB’s problems, if the Shriners had to close a hospital, it would be this one. So, yeah. Fuck Ike.
When I became a Noble of Morocco temple, there may have been 25,000 members. Later, (about 30 years ago) we sold our Temple property in downtown Jacksonville and built the facility on St John’s Bluff Road, which will apparently cost us $269,000 in 2009 for maintenance and operation. Nevertheless, income from rental of the facility is expected to be $350, 000 this year. Not a bad investment, I’d say, to net us $81,000 for the year.
This year, we see that membership is only 4000, with about half of whom are exempt from paying dues. Administrative and other expenses appear to exceed income from projected dues by more than $200,000.
The proposed official solution to this problem is to double the dues and to change the rules for paid-up membership so that those who would qualify for no dues this year will have to continue to pay for another 15 years, if they live that long.
Guess what! The ANCIENT ARABIC ORDER NOBLES of the MYSTIC SHRINE is on the way out! To become a member one must be a Freemason. Freemasonry in the US has declined in membership by more than 2,000,000 since 1975. During that same time, the US population has increased by more than 90,000,000. The best minds in Grand Lodges around the world have not been able to find a solution to this rapid decline, so it seems that there is no solution. Freemasonry is also on the way out.
The fate of the Shiners’ Hospitals for Children, does not necessarily have to be the same. It is supported mainly by funds from its foundation investments, which, is more than likely to be severely strapped in view of the current market situation. But, assets of the shrine Temples throughout North America could be transferred to the foundation, before this decline in membership causes them to disband. For example, Morocco could donate it’s money-making facility to the hospitals’ foundation. Other temples could make similar donations when they see the handwriting upon the wall.
So, what I am suggesting here is that leadership in the temples which are similarly declining, should plan now to donate its assets to the hospitals’ foundation. Surely the leadership can project the end of it’s viable existence unless it has its head in the cold, cold sands.
There’s nothing left. The guvmn’t gave it all to the thieves at the banks and Wall Street and Detroit. Hundreds of billions. They don’t care about a world class burn center that saves thousands of little kids and others from around the world every year. I doubt if this even made the New York Times.