| Patrick McMahon, EOC |
Pain management for children with terminal illnesses can be a challenge. Drugs often come with multiple side effects, including drowsiness, nausea and vomiting, which can limit children’s interactions with their families. Alternative pain management is one method that’s increasingly being used to help provide quality of life. “There are different types of therapies that do significantly ease a child’s pain and allow them to enjoy their family more and maybe simply sleep easier at night,"says Patrick McMahon, founding board member and treasurer of the each one counts foundation (EOC), a Pound Ridge, New York-based charity that provides grants for alternative pain management therapies for terminally and chronically ill children.
McMahon’s Villanova University roommate Brian Harrington founded EOC in 2007. The organization has made grants to more than 20 hospitals across North America — including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island; Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas; and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx — to offer massage, art, music and pet therapy and other alternative pain management services to children in hospice and palliative care.
The charity seeks to fill the gap between traditional medicine and health insurance, and effective nontraditional treatments. “The big thing is that insurance doesn’t really cover alternative pain management therapies," says the 51-year-old McMahon, CEO and CIO of MKP Capital Management, an $8.65 billion hedge fund firm he co-founded in 1995 after working nine years at Salomon Brothers, the last two as a partner.
A recent program EOC launched in partnership with the Vancouver, Washington-based Liddle Kidz Foundation gives free training in alternative therapies to health care providers so they’re able to offer treatments to their young patients. In return, they’re asked to donate 50 hours of massage services during the following year. EOC founder Harrington estimates that the program has provided more than 16,000 hours of therapeutic massage.
In recent years alternative therapies have become more common in conventional medical settings. “As we work with some various hospitals, a lot have tried to expand their programs as they see results,” McMahon says.
These therapies benefit a child’s family as well, says the hedge fund manager, because they can help with their child’s pain management. “The families can learn some skills from health care workers and be part of the process," he explains.
Harrington says that when he was starting his charity he immediately thought of McMahon because of his compassion and finance skills. “I needed a really smart guy to help me strategize how to build a business,” says the EOC founder. “I knew with Pat’s credentials in finance, having him as treasurer would be very helpful.”
For McMahon, who has two young children, the decision to get involved was an easy one. “You realize there’s so much pain and suffering for the individual child but also for their family,” he says. “Giving terminally ill children with weeks to months to live a peaceful passing is really a wonderful thing.”
