Area hospice cuts Lauer ties
Trustbridge, which operates Hospice of Palm Beach County, said Matt Lauer no longer represents the company’s values.
Trustbridge, which runs three South Florida hospices including Hospice of Palm Beach County, will no longer air commercials featuring Matt Lauer.
Trustbridge, which oper- ates three South Florida hospices including Hospice of Palm Beach County,
has announced that it will no longer air commercials featuring Matt Lauer, who was fired from his decades- long pos i tion at NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday morning.
“We all learned the news this morning that Matt Lauer was terminated from the Today show after a complaint about ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace’ by another employee,” reads the statement. “Trustbridge
does not condone any type of inappropriate behavior in our workplace. We feel strongly that any represen- tation of our brand should reflect our company values in every way.”
Lauer has long been associ- ated for years with the hosted hospice, a celebrity which pro-am golf tournament to benefit Hospice of Palm Beach County in memory of his father, the late Jay Robert Lauer. The elder Lauer, who lived in Palm Beach Gar- dens, was cared for by Hospice of Palm Beach toward the end of his life. The Jay Robert Lauer Hospice & Pal- liative Care Unit at JFK Medi- cal Center in Atlantis, which closed in 2014, was named for him.
The golf tournament, which was last held in 2009, also featured a gala held at The Breakers in Palm Beach. A Breakers spokeswoman declined to be interviewed, saying that the hotel does not
comment on guests.
Trustbridge, which is based in West Palm Beach, also operates Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton and a hospice in Broward County.
Lauer’s role with hospice became less prominent for a time, though this past spring he appeared in YouTube videos related to renovations at Hospice by the Sea.
Lauer did not respond to questions from The Palm Beach Post when the newspaper reported in 2012 that financial records showed Hospice of Palm Beach County was paying double-digit raises to executives and still had enough revenue to cover its expenses without donations in an era when Medicare routinely pays for hospice expenses at little or no cost to families. About 99 percent of the hospice’s patients were covered by Medicare, Medicaid, self-pay or third parties, the hospice reported to the state’s Department of Elder Affairs. Even after executive pay hikes, the hospice had a $90.7 million budget and $5.7 million left after expenses, according to its IRS Form 990 — a publicly available tax return for nonprofits — for the year ended Sept. 30, 2011. Two hospice fundraising foundations gave just under $5 million to the Palm Beach County-based hospice, records showed.
Hospice officials said the
charitable donations helped pay not only for “uncom- pensated” patients but also enhancements that govern- ment reimbursement did not cover, such as educational and music programs and children’s camps.