Rajah News - August 2022

years since opening these initial facilities, new facilities were built. The new hospitals in Cincinnati and Galveston were competed
in 1992 and the new facility for a burn hospital in Boston was completed in 1999.
Plus, the addition of a burn treatment center was opened in 1997 at the new Shriners Hospital for Children in Sacramento,
California, in 1997.
Along with Orthopedic and Burn treatment,
Shriners Hospitals added two more treatment
services.
In 1980, Shriners Hospitals responded to
another pediatric need by opening a spinal cord
injury rehabilitation unit at the Philadelphia
hospital.
This was the first pediatric spinal cord injury
unit in the country.
In 2005, the organization discovered that
facial clefts are one of the most common birth
defects in the U.S. Despite the frequency of its
occurrence, and the severity of the deformities,
complete care and treatment can be difficult
to obtain. As a result, Shriners Hospitals for
Children added a fourth official specialty to its
care disciplines: cleft lip and palate.
In the early 1960s, the health care system
aggressively entered the structured research
field. The innovative research conducted at
Shriners Hospitals for Children increases the total worldwide body of medical knowledge, potentially benefiting people of all ages
around the globe.
Shriners Hospitals for Children is changing lives every day through innovative pediatric
specialty care, world-class research and outstanding medical education. This care is given
to these patients, regardless of their family’s ability to pay. Their care and treatment is not
based on one’s ability to pay for any of their treatment, whatsoever.
All services are paid by the Shriners from a hospital fund supplied by the Shriners
Hospitals for Children Endowment Fund, which is supported by the gifts and bequests
of Shriners, their families, and the general public. Additional revenues come from fundraising
events and from an annual hospital assessment paid by each member of the Shrine.
In 2021, Shriners Hospital for Children officially changed its name to better reach
out to all children who may be suffering from a specific physical need and not just those
described by the former name of the philanthropy.
Now, “Shriners Children’s” currently includes hospitals/medical centers, orthopedic
units, several satellite clinics and four burn centers, including the Sacramento Hospital
which treats patients for both burns and orthopedic needs.
So, from that humble beginning of the founding of the first Shriners Hospital in 1927,
a group of specialized hospitals have grown into a health network of 22 specialized
hospitals providing expert medical care to more than 1,500,000 children,
regardless of the patient’s or their family’s ability to pay. These Shrine
supported “Temples of Mercy” have come to be known as the “World’s
Greatest Philanthropy,” operating throughout North America, including
20 facilities in the United States and one each in Mexico and Canada.
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Spinal cord rehabilitation unit established at
Shriners Philadelphia, 1980
Shriners Hospitals added
Facial Cleft treatment in
2005
In the next edition of the Rajah News, we’ll look at more ways the
Shriners Children’s has helped over one million patients and how the
treatment has expanded and has become even more accessible to more
patients and their families.