Future
On April 9, 2009, Ralph Semb, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Shriners Hospitals for Children, said, "Unless we do something, the clock is ticking and within five to seven years we'll probably be out of the hospital business and not have any hospitals."
Douglas Maxwell, the hospitals' CEO, stated in July 2009 that some of the facilities may be downgraded to outpatient surgical centers, and will begin accepting insurance payments (for most care) for the first time in the hospitals' 87-year history. Maxwell said children suffering from burns, orthopedic conditions, spinal cord injuries and cleft palates will continue to be treated without charge to their families. Maxwell said, "We've not changed who we are. We will always take care of children the best we can."
The Shriners had considered closing facilities in Shreveport, Louisiana; Greenville, South Carolina; Erie, Pennsylvania; Spokane, Washington; Springfield, Massachusetts and Galveston, Texas, eliminating a total of 225 beds. However in July, the Shriners National Convention voted to repair and reopen the Galveston facility, which was closed after Hurricane Ike struck in September 2008.
Despite an endowment that declined from $8 billion to $5 billion in less than a year because of the sputtering economy, Maxwell said he and other Shriners are confident the hospital system will be able to remain solvent in the long term.
Read more about this topic: Shriners Hospitals For Children
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)