For the past two and a half years, we have struggled with our federal funding. This struggle has become very personal at times for me, and the weight of its impact has sometimes taken a heavy toll.
The struggle hasn't been because of a lack of success in our efforts to acquire federal contracts. Due to Congressman Murtha's efforts in our stead, we have been extremely successful. In fact, we have been told that our collection of federally earmarked research contracts is one of the largest in the United States.
This situation also was not because of our lack of partners. We are partnering with places like Georgetown University, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Conemaugh Health System, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Francisco to name a few.
Our first challenge came when our long time funder, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences moved their focus from Congressional funding to NIH funding. The transition process involved in our transfer of those funds to TATRC at Fort Detrick held back the flow of our grants for over a year. Then we hit head on into the controversy created with the diocese's demolition of St. Mary's Hungarian Church. Our funds were embargoed for nearly seven months, while the mitigation process with the historical groups took place.
The greatest challenge, however, occurred because of our success. Windber Medical Center was a for profit hospital the entire time that it was owned by the Berwind White Coal Company, and when we became a 501(c)3 non profit hospital, we did so with very little funding in reserves. Consequently, as the Windber Research Institute grew, our funding mechanisms were structured so as to require funds to be spent and receipts submitted prior to the release of our grant monies.
The evolution of this growth was an extremely tight cash flow crunch that jeopardized not only the hospital, but also the Institute. It's important that you understand that our business has doubled in the past eight years, but, due to this grant requirement to spend before receipt of funds, our cash flow had reached an all time low, and the domino effect of this interesting predicament has been many sleepless nights for those of us responsible for making all of this work.
Why am I telling you this? Well, today, four of us went to the Jackson Foundation, the agency that handles our grants from the Department of Defense, and something great happened. After seven months of searching, we discovered with our partner, a way to accelerate the flow of our funds in order to alleviate this shortage of cash.
What does it mean to you? Maybe not so much. What does it mean to us, potentially, everything. It will allow the Research Institute to expand, exponentially. It will allow the hospital to be fiscally stable. Finally, it may even let a few of us worriers sleep a little more often. So, thank you Mr. Murtha. Thank you Jackson Foundation. Thank you Ft. Detrick/TATRC, and THANK YOU, GOD!!
Why didn't you tell me you needed some quick cash? I always have a little extra stashed in my wallet.
Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Bomber | Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 05:11 AM