UMass Memorial Health Care to Layoff 150

Another health care facility is getting ready to get rid of workers in order to correct its budget. This time the bad news is coming to the workers of UMass Memorial Health Care. This week the management of that health care facility announced that they would be letting go about 150 workers in the very near future.  They are also going to sell two of their business to other companies, a move that will put hundreds of other jobs in jeopardy. These moves are designed to help the company to make the $50 million in budget cuts that they need in order to stay in the black.

The company is blaming the need for cuts on increased competition and a decreased patient volume as people choose to delay or forgo care. The facility also cited an increased amount of free and reduced fee care as part of its need to layoff workers.

The company hopes that all  of the 150 layoffs needed will be able to come from one of the companies that they are selling, immediately, but they are currently in talks with the three different unions that represent the workers in order to determine what cuts are the most likely.

Of course, they are not the only medical center to make job cuts in the recent past. Some of you may recall our earlier coverage  at another large hospital, Mary University Medical Center at LSU. For those of you who missed the coverage here is an excerpt:

“ore bad news is coming to workers of the health care field, as another health facility is getting ready to get rid of staff in order to fix the holes in their budget.

This time the bad news is coming to the staff of Mary University Medical Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. The cut of staff, which will impact the clinical staff, is being attributed to a cut in funding from the state. The cuts from the state are coming as an overall part of the cuts to the overall Louisiana state budget.

While no one is exactly certain who will be let go from the medical center, but they  notification were sent out, via email, to every member of the staff earlier in this week. The notices sent by email were not exactly layoff notices, they were more pre-warning notices that layoffs were coming in the future.

This news was not completely unexpected, as rumors of layoffs have been circulating around the campus for weeks now, it was still a bit of a surprise to a number of employees. One worker at the facility, Jignesh Petal, told a reporter for KATC news the following about the mood at the facility after the notices went out about the layoffs,  “I think the initial reaction was a shock and surprise. Most of us were not anticipating that there would be budget cuts.”

So, as you can imagine there is a lot of wondering about who is going to get the ax and who is going to stay in their jobs for the time being. We do know the following about the layoffs. The hospital administration was told that they have to cut about $4,000 from the budget each month, in order to make things work. This means that about four budgets will have their staffing cut. At the current moment there is no information about which departments will be cut from the budget at this time. The current word is that most of the workers in those target departments will be cut.”