El Paso Children’s Hospital still owes UMC $59M

El Paso Children’s Hospital will still owe University Medical Center another $59 million come September for space in its tower and various other support services.

Children’s has already paid UMC nearly $34 million dollars since it opened about two years ago.

This week UMC began forming a finance committee to assess whether Children’s will be able to pay it’s bills when they come due.

“El Paso Children’s Hospital fully complies with the IRS,” said Children’s spokeswoman Georgina Panahi.

She said the hospital hasn’t filed its financial disclosure Form 990 to the IRS since fiscal 2010. The fiscal 2011 form was due Feb. 15, 2013.

“We’ve asked the IRS for the appropriate extensions,” Panahi said. “Because we are a brand-new, not-for-profit children’s hospital in our community, we don’t have historical data.”

Children’s received two 90-day extensions from the IRS, which would mean the form should have been due in August 2013.

“We actually have until April 16 to finish that first year 990,” said Children’s CEO Larry Duncan. “And it’ll be done within the next week without a problem.”

Panahi wouldn’t clarify why the IRS granted the eight-month extension beyond the two 90-day extensions.

“The IRS does not require a non-profit organization to publicly disclose Form 8868 application for extension of time to file an exempt organization returns,” Panahi said. “All extensions were filed through our accountants within the parameters that they filed them to make sure that everything was accurate.”

ABC-7 told Panahi that she wasn’t answering the question of why the IRS granted a special eight-month extension.

“I’m answering everything as clearly as possible, so that our viewers can understand the situation,” Panahi said. “This is a special circumstance, because El Paso Children’s Hospital, this is for our first year of operation, so this is brand new. We wanted to make sure everything was accurate.”

Duncan told ABC-7 on Thursday that Albuquerque auditing firm Moss-Adams didn’t finish its audit of the hospital until recently, which delayed the form’s completion.

Moss-Adams wouldn’t comment Friday on when it received the financial information from Children’s, or how long the firm took to complete the audit.

The hospital’s accounting firm wouldn’t say why the IRS granted the extra eight months.

The IRS didn’t return ABC-7’s call.