Philanthropy Helps Drive Great Healthcare
 Whether a contribution is small or large, gifts to the LRMC Foundation, make a huge difference in the lives of patients—today and tomorrow. Philanthropy ensures that our medical and cancer centers will continue to afford the latest equipment, employ new medical research and clinical techniques, and offer a higher level of care—all in surroundings that are comfortable and best suited to facilitate the healing process.
Because of the enormous cost of healthcare and extremely tight operating margins, hospitals typically have limited resources for upgrading and self-improvement. This is where foundations and philanthropic gifts fill in. For example, at a 1 percent operating margin, a hospital would have to generate $10,000 in new services to have $100 left over for new equipment, renovations and upgrades.
An aging population, poor lifestyle choices, prescription drug costs and medical technology all contribute to the rise in healthcare costs. While new therapies and treatments improve the quality of life for patients and new vaccines offer better prevention, these also come with a price in the form of increased costs to consumers in how much they pay for medical care.
Furthermore, conducting advanced research is also costly, requiring highly skilled physicians and scientists who study diseases at many levels. For instance:
If you were stricken by illness 100 years ago, your doctor could do little more than provide comfort. Today's physicians draw upon a vast arsenal of drugs, vaccines, diagnostic tools and advanced techniques, all of which were developed through medical research and clinical trials. Prior to 1920, being diagnosed with diabetes was a virtual death sentence, but the development of insulin offered diabetics the hope of living a full life. In the 1950s, kidney failure left patients with little hope of survival. Today, hormone replacement therapies and advanced drugs have made kidney and other organ transplants virtually commonplace.
Click here for Foundation Newsletter
|
