As El Paso Children’s Hospital reported its sixth consecutive year of profit but a sharp drop in net income, CEO Cindy Stout received her largest pay raise since the hospital became profitable — earning $661,546 last year. That’s a 35% increase over the previous year.
That total for 2024 – which includes base pay, bonuses and other reportable compensation – is about $172,000 more than she made the previous year. Stout also received $40,153 in other compensation, according to the hospital’s Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service in August.
Tax-exempt organizations, such as the nonprofit children’s hospital, must report their basic financials to the IRS at the end of each fiscal year, including revenues, expenses and compensation details for its top staff and board members.
El Paso Matters requested last week a copy of Stout’s contract, salary and performance evaluation for both 2024 and 2025. Laurel Huston, chief legal officer for El Paso Children’s Hospital, responded that the Texas Public Information Act does not apply to the hospital. In response to a similar request last year, Huston said the hospital is not a governmental body, which would be subject to open records laws.
A spokesperson for El Paso Children’s Hospital said its legal team was reviewing El Paso Matters’ request for comments from Stout and board chair Steve Anderson, but did not provide a response by Tuesday morning.
Stout started her medical career as a nurse, working in oncology and hematology. She spent more than 20 years at Del Sol Medical Center, where she served as chief nursing officer, followed by a brief stint at University Medical Center of El Paso.
Staff work at a nurses’ station on the seventh floor of El Paso Children’s Hospital on Oct. 31. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
She took the lead of El Paso Children’s Hospital in 2017, charged with turning it around after it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015 and entered a partnership with UMC in 2016.
Jacob Cintron, CEO of UMC, will be paid more than $1 million in salary and bonus this fiscal year, according to his contract. Hospital board managers typically approve his salary in the spring.
El Paso Children’s Hospital owed $34.4 million of the $48 million bankruptcy debt as of Sept. 30, 2024, a UMC spokesperson told El Paso Matters last year. UMC has not provided an updated figure.
Other findings from hospital tax filing
For 2024, El Paso Children’s Hospital reported an increase in both revenue and expenses with a net income of $15.7 million – down almost 50% from the previous year, but profitable for its sixth year in a row. Hospital officials didn’t respond to questions about the drop in net income.
Executive compensation makes up 1% of total expenses, while other salaries and wages make up 31% of expenses.
Medical staff speak in the hallway of El Paso Children’s Hospital on Oct. 31, 2022. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
El Paso Children’s tax filing shows its four biggest contracts for clinical and nursing services were $31.2 million to Texas Tech Health El Paso, $2 million and $1.9 million to staffing companies Qualivis and Quantum Plus, respectively, and $1.8 million to Dr. Roberto Canales, a pediatric oncologist and the hospital’s chief clinical officer.
El Paso Children’s Hospital did not clarify if Canales receives a salary in addition to the independent contract. He and Dr. Rodolfo Fierro-Stevens, chief of neuroscience at the hospital, remain embroiled in a wrongful death lawsuit with the parents of 3-year-old patient Ivanna Maria Saucedo, though a judge dismissed the hospital from the case.
The hospital also reported a business transaction involving then-board member Amy Ross. El Paso Children’s Hospital paid $1.2 million for contract services to El Paso Imaging Consultants, a company owned by Ross’ husband. Ross was prohibited from participating in decisions involving the contract, according to the tax filing.
The hospital added 26 new pediatric care rooms on its previously vacant eighth floor, including its first epilepsy monitoring unit, last year. More than 200 patients have come to the hospital for epilepsy monitoring, Stout told KTSM in October. The hospital also added its first pediatric geneticist, Dr. Maria Ethel Aguirre Flores, this summer.
“As a not-for-profit hospital, everything that we do, when the money is made for the hospital, we keep pumping it back over to the services,” Stout told KTSM.
Is El Paso Children’s a public or private hospital?
Whether the hospital is a governmental body subject to public records requests has been at the center of debate for years.
In March 2024, Children’s declined to provide Stout’s contract, salary and performance evaluation, providing a letter from the Texas Attorney General’s Office stating the hospital is not a governmental body subject to the requirements of the Texas Public Information Act.
In December 2024, however, 41st District Court Judge Annabell Perez dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital, siding with attorneys that claimed El Paso Children’s Hospital has governmental immunity from lawsuits.
That conflicts with past assertions from hospital representatives that El Paso Children’s is a private entity, not a public one.
University Medical Center of El Paso is owned by the people of El Paso County. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Daniel Veale, a spokesperson for El Paso Children’s, previously described the hospital as a separately licensed contractor for the El Paso County Hospital District, which consists of UMC, a public hospital. But El Paso Children’s is not a legal subsidiary of UMC, he wrote in an email last year.
El Paso Children’s Hospital provides pediatric care on behalf of UMC. While the two hospitals work closely together, the children’s hospital manages its operations independently with its own CEO, board of directors and revenue sources.
Unlike UMC, El Paso Children’s Hospital does not receive a portion of property taxes from county residents. The vast majority of the hospital’s revenue comes from patient services, though it also receives grants and donations.
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