Shriners delegates vote to keep Erie hospital open
From goerie.comSAN ANTONIO (AP) — The Erie Shriners Hospital and five others targeted for possible closure across the country won an initial reprieve Monday.
Delegates at a national Shriners convention voted to keep all 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children open, but no decision on the hospitals’ future is final until the convention ends Thursday. Secret deliberations are conducted by the fraternal order and members are allowed to take up new proposals between now and the end of the convention.
Separately, the delegates voted 756-482 to reopen the Shriners Hospital for Children-Galveston. The burn hospital has been closed since Hurricane Ike hit in September.
Ralph Semb, chief executive officer of the hospital system, did not immediately return a Monday night call from The Associated Press. The Shriners have said they will have a news conference Thursday.
Delegates will now consider proposals to save the hospital system without closing facilities, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Shriners hospitals have offered free care since the first facility opened 87 years ago. Shriners say their endowment has fallen below $5 billion.
Efforts could be made to bring up new measures to keep the Galveston hospital closed, warned Tommy Lambright, a member of the hospital’s board who led a lobbying effort to contact all 1,500 convention delegates about reopening.
“But I don’t believe there is any way someone is going to try to pull a fast one and overturn the vote of the convention,” Lambright said.
Stuart Simms, a member of the Galveston hospital’s governing board from San Antonio told the Chronicle he made proposed reopening the burn center “because in my judgment there was a need for medical care in regards to burned children, and this was the most efficient way to meet it.”
The Shriners had been asked to consider closing hospitals in Galveston; Shreveport, La.; Spokane, Wash.; Greenville, S.C.; Erie, Pa.; and Springfield, Mass.
