Annual Report 2000

• Mission Statement
• President’s Message
• Statement of Activities
• Grant Recipients
• Highlighted Grants

Mission Statement

Realizing the healthcare crisis in our country, the Board of Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. recognizes that no one foundation can meet all the challenges of the healthcare environment. However, the Foundation has developed a program of grant making which is designed to be both a catalyst and guide for other foundations and grant making organizations in meeting the various needs of the Chicagoland healthcare community. The Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. grants funds in order to promote and maintain access to adequate healthcare for all people in the Chicagoland area regardless of race, sex, creed or financial need. The Foundation meets this goal through its grants for medical and nursing education, medical research and direct healthcare services.

As a guide to other foundations and other service providers and as a part of the Board’s stewardship of charitable funds, the Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. has developed a grant evaluation system to ensure that the objectives of various projects are carried out in the manner prescribed by the approved grant.

The Foundation wishes to impress on the philanthropic community that the careful evaluation of the outcomes of grant projects is as important as the appropriate selection of grant recipients.

President’s Message

Dr. Angelo P. Creticos

Please Resuscitate! In place of discussing the many accomplishments of Washington Square Health Foundation this past year, I am compelled to address the serious developments that affect all of society – and portend potential disaster for our medical care system! Every where we turn we see problems that continue to multiply and are engulfing us as we stand by doing precious little that is constructive to alter the course that is leading to the eventual demise of the medical care system in the U.S.A.

Briefly these problems are:

• continued increasing costs of medical care;
• the drying up of resources for indigent health care;
• high costs of pharmaceuticals with little to no subsidy;
• increasing cost of co-pays for medications;
• application of greater uncompensated deductions;
• drying up of educational and research monies;
• updated expensive diagnostic and therapeutic equipment not available to all in a timely fashion;
• mandated rationing of physician time for relating to patients;
• capitation guidelines rigidly enforced;
• enormous costs experienced by medical and facilities providers to keep up with review and regulatory bodies;
• demands by third party payors who thrive on statistics and tons of form completions;
• closing of hospitals;
• development of mega hospitals and provider claims;
• lack of catastrophic coverage distributed in an equitable manner;
• depersonalized care; and
• many other non-medical requirements that control the delivery of medical care.

In essence, our medical care system is now in the Intensive Care Unit, is hooked up to life sustaining devices and is now in fear that the “Do Not Resuscitate Order” will soon be signed by the controllers of the health care establishment! In fact, the San Diego Medical Society recently released a manuscript entitled “Healthcare at the Crossroads: A Code Blue Report on the Status of Healthcare”.

With the entire overhauling of the health system by government and corporate America, which promised all types of improvements, we have witnessed instead the development of depersonalized medical care, cash book medicine, enormous corporate America profits, and a genuine general mistrust of our entire health system by the public.

Society by now should have matured and realize that the catch phrase “Self Serving” used by the third party payors to discredit the health system’s criticism of corporate America can no longer be their theme song and should no longer stifle proper opposition to their misdeeds. Who is in a better position to plead the argument for patients – physicians and the myriad of other health care givers or the economic forces that desire to pad their wallets or fatten their profits while limiting monies for health care belonging to the public.

Obviously all these questions beg for a solution. Needless to say, there is no one person who can or will solve our healthcare dilemma. However, any new and improved health system must consider a number of postulates, facts, and ideas in order to succeed and be ideal for all our citizens. In so doing, we must also accept a common denominator, that there is no perfect system. Our goal must be a workable and as equitable a system as possible that provides the best of care to all. It must have compassion, understanding and not use financial incentives as our goal. In short the health care system badly needs humanism as a common denominator.

In order to accomplish this the following must be considered:

• Denounce a system wherein 40+ million citizens have no health care coverage!
• Understand that socialized medicine is not the answer.
• Corporate for profit health care is not the answer, as the present “environment” will demonstrate.
• Medicare has been a good program – but needs to be fine tuned in order to reach its goal.
• The one plus trillion dollars spent yearly for health care should be sufficient if properly allocated and applied to health care for all – and not used to satisfy the shareholders of corporate America.
• Governmental and private payor bureaucracy must be greatly reduced – at least by 50%, so that fattened administrative costs are eliminated.
• None or poor support of our medical education system and our medical research needs will guarantee second rate medical care and more non-professional control of patients’ lives.
• Accept the fact that participation in the cost of health care is a citizen obligation – but have the degree of participation in cost scaled to income and capabilities.
• Expand the Medicare program to include a meaningful prescription and durable benefit plan – and extend such a requirement to all health plans sold to employers or individuals alike.
• Select those programs (there are a few) that managed care has developed that enhance quality of care, such as preventive medical immunization programs, as well as mandated continuous education obligations for all health professional.

I am sure there are other features that an improved, more equitable health care system must include, but I believe the above gives the basics and a good starting goal to achieve.

Finally, I must caution that if society does not act now – if we do not Resuscitate Medical Care now – we will all be doomed to experience the Dark Ages in Medical Care – and in a way we will be witnessing and accept-ing the Euthanasia of Medical Care, eliminating whatever good it can do for society.

Statement of Activities

	Year ended September 30, 2000
Operating activities:
	Revenues:
	Interest and dividends	$912,396
	Net realized gain on investments	3,429,789
	Other	6,398
Total operating activities revenue		4,348,583
	Expenses:
	Grants	969,595 *
	Management and general:
	Salaries	167,065
	Payroll taxes	9,858
	Professional fees:
	Investment management and custodial	155,211
	Legal and accounting	32,508
	Board fees and expenses	71,735
	Occupancy	37,736
	Office supplies	11,026
	Insurance	16,343
	Depreciation	3,713
	Miscellaneous	39,782
Total management and general		544,977
	Provision for federal excise taxes	86,922
Total operating activities expenses		1,601,494
Excess of operating activities revenue over expenses		2,747,089
Nonoperating activities – net unrealized gain (loss) on investments		(3,281,427)
Decrease in net assets		(534,338)
Unrestricted net assets, beginning of year		31,964,510
Unrestricted net assets, end of year		$31,430,172
*Grants do not include Program Related Investments (PRI) of $259,057 distributed during fiscal year 1999-2000. Grants and PRI’s distributed for fiscal year 1999-2000 total $1,228,652. The official and complete audit as certified by KPMG Peat Marwick .

Fiscal Year 1999-00 Grant Recipients