Some Shriners Hospitals may close

From the Greenville News in S.C.:

Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville is one of six Shriners hospitals that could be shuttered around the country as the organization copes with mounting budget problems.

The Shriners Hospital endowment has been declining since 2001 and operating at a deficit, said Ralph Semb, CEO of Shriners Hospitals for Children.

“We can’t afford to operate 22 hospitals,” he said. “So we have put together three or four options and one is to close these hospitals.”

The Greenville hospital has been a part of the community for more than 80 years, treated about 15,000 patients last year and employs 249 people. And beyond caring for children, it sponsors a variety of community events, such as last year’s baseball game between patients and two local Little League teams and an upcoming medical conference on cerebral palsy in June.

The hospital, which treats children with cerebral palsy, club foot, spinal abnormalities and other orthopedic conditions, made the list because it is underutilized, Semb said.

However, Rodney Brown, chairman of the board of governors for the Greenville Shriners Hospital, said it is seeing more patients every year and always operates under its $18 million budget.

“There is no logical reason to close our hospital,” he said. “We’re seeing 1,600 patients a month in the outpatient setting and do 70 to 80 surgeries a month.”

Semb said the organization uses income from an endowment to fund the hospitals, which provide special orthopedic and burn care to children at no charge regardless of ability to pay. But that endowment declined from $8 billion to $5 billion, leaving the organization with a shortfall. Its 2009 operating budget is $856 million, he said.

“We’re starting to dig in to the endowment by $1 million a day to balance the budget,” he said. “If we’re going to take care of kids for another 88 years, we need to retrofit the system.”

Choices include closing the six hospitals or cutting their budgets by 25 percent, which would mean reduced services, Semb said.

Another possibility for the Greenville Shriners hospital is forging a relationship with Greenville Hospital System, he said.

Dr. William Schmidt, medical director of GHS’s Children’s Hospital, said a variety of options are being explored.

“The services they provide are invaluable in our community,” he said. “And I would want to do all we can to ensure those services stay in our community, whether we do something collaboratively or figure out a different scenario.”

Schmidt said no decision would be made until Shriners determines what it will do at an annual meeting in July.

But Brown said the Greenville Shriners hospital shouldn’t be on the list to begin with. It serves a six-state area from Alabama to Virginia, and the only other two hospitals in the Southeast are in Florida and Kentucky, he said.

Other hospitals in the system are much closer together geographically, he said, and the Greenville hospital is in the middle of the list when it comes to performance.

“When you look at statistics, we’re nowhere near the bottom,” he said.

The other hospitals are Erie, Pa.; Spokane, Wash; A, Springfield, Mass.; and Shreveport, La. A fifth hospital in Galveston, Tex., damaged by Hurricane Ike, has been closed since, and Semb said the vote would include whether to reopen it. One of the Greenville hospital’s more celebrated patients was Salee Allawe, a young Iraqi girl who lost both legs in an air strike.

Doctors operated on her before fitting her with two prosthetic legs, which she learned to use walking around Greenville in 2007. Brown said hospital employees are volunteering to cut their hours or take furloughs to keep the hospital open. Meanwhile, he said he will try to persuade Shriners that the hospital shouldn’t be closed.

“There are going to be a lot of kids that aren’t going to be treated,” he said. “And it’s really sad.”

Semb said that no matter what happens, no child will be left without care. But to keep all the hospitals running, he said the endowment needs to grow to $12 billion by 2014, a daunting task in today’s environment.

“We’re in a financial crisis like everyone else,” he said.