As SLO County hospice center closes due to financial loss, CEO was paid $485,000

As SLO County hospice center closes due to financial loss, CEO was paid $485,000
[CA] The Tribune; by Chloe Shrager; 6/25/25
Wilshire Health & Community Services, a San Luis Obispo-based hospice and community care center, will close its doors on June 30, 2025, after over four decades of operation on the Central Coast. Tax forms show that the CEO of Wilshire Health & Community Services earned a salary of nearly $500,000 in 2023 with regular annual raises, even as the San Luis Obispo-based medical hospice and community care center announced it will close at the end of the month due to financial struggles. As the business conditions deteriorated in recent years, CEO Tricia Smith’s salary continued to increase. In 2023, her salary jumped by over $100,000, according to ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer database.
Guest Editor's Note, Mark Cohen: There are several actionable lessons from this well-reported but unfortunate series of articles. Whenever your spokesperson’s primary defense is to compare your numbers to much larger, broader healthcare organizations ... you’ve lost the reputational battle. And while we don’t know whether the spokesperson made any mention of the not-for-profit organization’s mission fulfillment activities and board-driven efforts to assess and meet community need for serious illness, end-of-life, and grief and bereavement care, there’s no mention of any of that in this article. That’s either a serious failing by the spokesperson or an unfortunate omission by the reporter. This serves as a reminder to every not-for-profit hospice: No matter how much you’ve pared back your communications staff, one of the first rules of crisis communications is to have thoroughly communicated your mission-fulfillment positives long and consistently BEFORE any reputational crisis hits. Have you?