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| Philanthropy |
Commercial Concerns
Samantha Marshall
05/03/2004
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This has been proven in the health-care field on any number of
occasions. Indeed, just as the Iris Cantor Center opened, Mount Sinai Hospital
closed a similar facility in New York that was suffering millions of dollars in
losses each year. The Mount Sinai center was located near Harlem, and it bled
cash in part because of its high percentage of Medicare and Medicaid patients,
whose insurance often barely covered the cost of services.
TOP VIEW
The experience of a prominent New York philanthropist reflects the dilemma many
of us face when we go about funding a nonprofit institution, particularly in the
health-care sector: Exclusively serving those who cannot afford to pay for
medical care will quickly drain a facility of the financial resources it needs
to survive. |
Business Realities
As much as a philanthropist might want to underwrite a
medical facility’s costs so that it can serve all of those in financial
distress, Mount Sinai’s fate shows how difficult it is to keep one afloat in a
poor community, as medical costs soar and the government cuts spending on health
care. Philanthropists such as Cantor have learned from examples like this that
it is better to put a facility on a strong economic footing, and serve a smaller
number of the poor, than it is to go bust and serve none at all.
Cantor
wrestled with the problem of philanthropy versus pragmatism when planning the
new facility. The location, at New York-Presbyterian’s Weill Cornell facility on
East 61st Street, is in the heart of one of the city’s most affluent
neighborhoods, but a tough commute for poor women who live in Harlem or the less
well-heeled sections of the outlying boroughs.
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