The Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, a prominent treatment center for victims of disabling spinal cord and brain injuries, has converted to a for-profit company as a prelude to a nationwide expansion of its treatment and research missions.
In announcing the end of the institute's nonprofit status Monday, Kenneth W. Aitchison, president of the institute's parent corporation, said the conversion would not lead to higher charges to the 24,000 patients it treats a year or to their medical-insurance providers.Instead, Aitchison said, the conversion would allow Kessler to raise more money, through methods like selling stock, and to broaden itself from a regional to a national treatment center.
"We're hoping to make the company a premier facility nationally," Aitchison said.
No stock sales are planned soon, but eventually they could help finance acquisitions and mergers, Aitchison said.
Under a conversion plan approved by the state, ownership of Kessler's assets, valued at about $150 million, has been transferred to an existing foundation named after the institute's founder, Dr. Henry H. Kessler. The foundation is still a nonprofit entity, and it will dedicate its resources, including existing stock holdings, to research, treatment and educational and charitable activities for victims of disabling injuries and illnesses, Aitchison said.
One of the foundation's long-range goals, he said, is finding a cure for paralysis from spinal cord injuries.
The conversion plan allows the institute's parent corporation, the Kessler Rehabilitation Corp., to become a profit-making business. It will carry out the nationwide growth plan, sell stock on its own and continue to operate and earn income from existing hospitals, outpatient centers, nursing homes and assisted-living centers in New Jersey.
Since Kessler created the institute in 1948 as a 16-bed rehabilitation center for the disabled, it has become one of the nation's top-ranked physical rehabilitation hospitals. It has treatment and care centers in 16 communities in New Jersey.
A spokesman, Lonnie Soury, said the institute treats 6,000 people a year as inpatients and 18,000 as outpatients. They suffer from disabilities or paralysis resulting from brain or spinal injury, amputation, stroke or polio.
The actor Christopher Reeve was treated at Kessler for months after he was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in May 1995. A young New Jersey piano teacher who was severely beaten in Central Park in 1996 was also treated there, as was Matthew Gross, the rock band leader from Montclair, N.J., who was shot on an observation deck in the Empire State Building last February.