Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center to Cut Jobs

Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center is a hospital that describes itself in the following terms “Saint Mary’s brings together more than 2,200 employees, 850 physicians and 300 volunteers–all committed to the vision and mission begun by the Dominican Sisters over a century ago. Our Mission Catholic Healthcare West and its Sponsoring Congregations are committed to furthering the healing ministry of Jesus. We dedicate our resources to: Delivering compassionate, high-quality, affordable health services; Serving and advocating for our sisters and brothers who are poor and disenfranchised; and Partnering with others in the community to improve the quality of life” Apparently the hospital believes it can do without a chunk of that staff. The company is distributing post sale layoff notices to its workers.

The facility was sold by one health care company to another. The sale, which has been made to Prime Healthcare services, a company based in Ontario, Canada, will mean a significant change in the way things are run. The sale will go into effect on the first of July of this year.

For the time being the neither the existing owners nor the new owners have released a public statement about how many, if any, of the worker are going to be kept on and how many are going to be given the boot. While some layoffs during a transition of ownership are to be expected this level of quite about the changes is more than enough to stir up some anxiety around the employees.

For the time being there is no official count on how many workers are being give the boot because of the sale, but it is almost certainly enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The company put out a press release in March about the sale of the property in which the following promise was made, “Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center will continue all normal operations during this transition. There will be no impact on patient care, employment, contracts, billing, or any other facet of Saint Mary’s daily operations during this transition.” Apparently, that is going out of the window now that the transfer is getting closer and closer. The press release also said, “The sale ensures that the hospital will remain open, offering all current acute and emergency care services to the Reno community. Saint Mary’s sponsoring congregation, the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, has approved the transaction, which is expected to be finalized by June 30.” And most of that appears to be true, so who knows maybe the new company plans on hiring the workers back on.