Endowment for Quality and Access: Dr. Richard Caggiano and Karen Karpman
Call it leaving a legacy. Or, call it ensuring future health care for everyone. Or, maybe it's just a will to give back. All of it figures into reasons why physician Richard Caggiano and psychologist Karen Karpman helped establish and are now promoting the Endowment for Quality and Access.
As Pullman Regional Hospital's Chief Medical Officer, Richard said philanthropy is an important key to guaranteeing continued outstanding patient care at Pullman Regional Hospital. And the endowment, established through the PRH Foundation, is one way to fund the goal.
“The problem is, that we are busier than we've ever been. We have twice as many patients and twice as many employees as we had when I came here,” said Richard, who moved to Pullman from Boston University 17 years ago and served as PRH's emergency services director until assuming his current position in 2010.
“So we really do need to find other alternative funding,” he said, “because we don't want to lose our hospital in Pullman, and we don't want to lose our independence.”
Karen, a clinical psychologist who works in conjunction with PRH, said she couldn't agree more with her husband. Amid uncertain government funding and healthcare reform changes, a local nest egg is priceless
“In order to maintain local control,” Karen said, “It's really important to support the hospital.”
With successful healthcare careers established and retirement nearing, Richard and Karen said they have the financial wherewithal and hopefully more time in the future to continue advancement of the endowment. The current goal is to garner $10 million – and ultimately $75 million.
Such big-dollar targets, the two said, depend on establishing a culture of giving throughout the community. “It's pretty ambitious, but anybody can support it,” said Richard, adding that he's currently working to bring local physicians into the fold.
“When you're getting closer to retirement, like me, you want the things you've helped to create to still be there and you want more, not less,” Richard explained. “And so that's why it's important for me to support the endowment, as well as to help convince other physicians to consider the same support.”
Karen said her championing of the endowment is as much personal as it is professional. “Based on being a patient--both an in-patient and out-patient—at the hospital,” she said, “I think the quality of care was excellent in both situations.”
On the professional front, Karen said PRH's support has been stalwart. “As a person who practices privately, I really appreciated the help from the hospital,” Karen said of her work in behavioral health, “Everything from providing signage to setting up the office itself. They were just so very generous, and I really like that spirit of community support.”
The Endowment for Quality and Access is geared to maintaining the current level of high-quality hospital care, access for everyone to all needed services including emergency specialty care, superior patient-family experiences, and continued physician excellence. Such services and programs, Richard and Karen said, can't be funded by hospital operations alone; thus the need for a substantial endowment.
“Basically, an endowment can invest and get a return off the investment,” Richard said, “And then hopefully we eventually live off the investment.”