Sharon Hospital to Cut 26 Jobs

The odds are that most of us who do not live in the state of Connecticut do not know about Sharon Hospital. For those of you who are not familiar Sharon Hospital is the only for-profit in the state.  Here is more in-depth look at Sharon Hospital based on how the company describes itself:

“Sharon Hospital is an acute care community hospital dedicated to serving the healthcare needs of our communities… Our hospital is licensed for 78 general hospital beds & is accredited by many governmental & healthcare organizations, both regionally & nationally…With over 425 staff, Sharon Hospital is one of the largest & most well respected employers in the region. Employment at Sharon Hospital offers professional opportunity, competitive salaries & benefits, easy access from three states, free parking & a safe & exceptionally beautiful working environment overlooking the Litchfield hills. ”

Well it looks like the hospital is getting ready to cut back on 26 of its workers, which according to the information provided is actually less than 10 percent of their staff. Members of the staff whoa re being let go found out yesterday and the layoffs will go into immediate effect. So workers who were notified yesterday will be out of a job today.

Healthcare, which was once considered to be a safe field has been loosing just as many jobs in the current economy as any other field. For those of you who missed our earlier coverage of the layoffs in the city of Miami her is an excerpt from our earlier coverage:

“The Jackson Memorial, a major South Florida hospital has informed that in order to save millions of dollars, it’s going to lay off thousands of workers.

Admirable mentality. With Japan as an example of what skilled human workers can do to raise a nation’s economy without adequate land mass or resources, our decision makers think economic growth is a result of human resource culling and throttling – or they seem to think something quite similar to that if one sees the number of firefighters, law enforcement officers, teachers, and hospital workers given the boot every day, all in the name of saving and reinforcing the economy.

Well, back to the news, as the story goes, the President and CEO of Jackson Health System Carlos Migoya officially announced the cuts on Tuesday at a press conference. He said, “This is not about a profit and loss, this is about efficiency … What we’re looking to do at this point is right-sizing the organization, so we have the right number of employees for the kind of volumes that we have.”

Already 195 positions have been eliminated (one would like to say ‘compromised’ in the language of Frederick Forsythe), and 920 are in the pipeline amounting to 1,115 jobs. This would mean that Jackson Memorial had been overstaffed by 10% all along.

Jackson’s representatives confirmed that the cuts would create a savings of $69 million including the savings in benefits.

Employees in the list include clinical employees as well as general employees and nurses. Doctors at JMH were disheartened. Trauma surgeon Dr. Howard Lieberman said “It’s a bad situation they’re in…We’ve been losing money for years now, and we try to take care of everyone, insurance, no insurance. It doesn’t matter how sick you are, who you are, we take care of everyone here, and something has to give.””