SAN ANTONIO — Six Shriners hospitals targeted for possible closure across the country won an initial reprieve Monday.

Delegates at a national Shriners convention voted to keep all 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children open, but no decision on the hospitals' future is final until the convention ends Thursday. Secret deliberations are conducted by the fraternal order, and members are allowed to take up new proposals between now and the end of the convention.

Separately, the delegates voted 756-482 to reopen the Shriners Hospital for Children-Galveston. The burn hospital has been closed since Hurricane Ike hit in September.

Ralph Semb, chief executive officer of the hospital system, did not immediately return a call Monday night. The Shriners said they will have a news conference Thursday.

Delegates will now consider proposals to save the hospital system without closing facilities, a Houston newspaper reported.

Shriners hospitals have offered free care since the first facility opened 87 years ago. The Shriners said their endowment has fallen below $5 billion.

Efforts could be made to bring up new measures to keep the Galveston hospital closed, warned Tommy Lambright, a member of the hospital's board who led a lobbying effort to contact all 1,500 convention delegates about reopening.

"But I don't believe there is any way someone is going to try to pull a fast one and overturn the vote of the convention," Lambright said.

Stuart Simms, a member of the Galveston hospital's governing board from San Antonio said he proposed reopening the burn center because there was a need for medical care for burned children.

The Shriners had been asked to consider closing hospitals in Galveston; Shreveport, La.; Spokane, Wash.; Greenville, S.C.; Erie, Pa.; and Springfield, Mass.