Dear Friends of Shriners Hospital for Children—Spokane,

You all know that I pretty much tell you how I am feeling when I sit and write this article. This time will be no different. 

As I’ve talked about all year, we have worked very hard to increase our patient numbers in 2009 and get our volumes up.  I am proud to say it is working!  We have more applications, have performed more surgeries, had more stable traumas transferred and we have seen a steady increase across the board of our measurable statistics.

But, in the next two weeks I will be submitting a budget for 2010 to my Board of Governors and headquarters that could drastically change what we are able to do here in Spokane. After three straight years of budget cuts, we have been directed to plan for an additional 5% budget cut going in to 2010.  We will be given the opportunity to address the impact of this cut in increments of 2%, 3%, 4% and 5%.  Let me be clear.  Anything deeper than 3% for our hospital means certain closure of departments and loss of one of our three missions (education, research or care).

This reduction is following a 7% cut we just took in May (12% total in 2009!) and we have recently conducted the first lay off of personnel in our 85 year history. We told nine staff members they were great employees but we couldn’t afford to pay them any longer.  We told an additional 13 staff members they were great employees but we needed to cut their hours. I personally sat through every one of the lay off meetings and it was a difficult day for all of us. Most of them were very gracious, but shocked and sad.

After working so hard to build our volumes, it wasn’t that we didn’t have work for these people to do. The reality is we cannot continue to perform our mission with this level of funding. At this point, we will have to eliminate services, treatment options and reduce surgery levels. This may not be the case for every hospital in the system, but in our situation, every dollar we pull out of our operating budget has an immediate impact. 

We know that the delegates voted in San Antonio to support 22 facilities across the system. Now the question remains, “what type of facilities do you want your good name on?”  If we continue to sustain these kinds of cuts, we will not be able to maintain our current services with high quality care for our children without compromising safety. The only option is to eliminate services and begin turning kids away.  We don’t want to see happen and I’m sure you don’t either.

Sincerely,

Gene Raynaud, FACHE
Administrator