The University of Texas Medical Branch to Cut 51 Jobs

When it comes to colleges there are a lot of options out there, and when it comes down to it unless you work for a university, or you happen to live in the area the odds are good that you don’t know much about a school called The University of Texas Medical Branch. For those of you who are not familiar with the school here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston’s [UTMB Health] mission is to improve health for the people of Texas and around the world. UTMB is an inclusive, collaborative community of forwardthinking educators, scientists, clinicians, staff and students dedicated to a single purpose—improving health. We prepare future health professionals for practice, public service and lifelong learning through innovative curricula and individualized educational experiences”

Well, it looks as if the school is going to have to do without a significant number of workers. The school is getting ready to get rid of 51 workers in the form of a mass layoff action. 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, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. 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.” On the bright side under the terms of a mass layoff action the worker at the school will have to be give several weeks of notice about their impending job cuts before they can be put off of the payroll, giving them time to prepare for the coming loss of income.

The company  recently gave a large research grant to one of its researchers here is an excerpt from the release on the  grant, “A research team at UTMB, led by Kenneth Ottenbacher, has received a grant of nearly $1 million from the National Institutes of Health to study why some patients are more likely to be readmitted to a hospital shortly after they are discharged. Readmission rates have received recent attention as an indicator of hospital quality and a factor that if managed differently could help reduce costs in programs like Medicare.” One has to wonder exactly how many jobs could have been saved if that money had gone to the payrolls instead of a research project?

This school however, is not the only one in the health care field to experience some fiscal issues in the last couple of weeks. Some of you may have missed out on our earlier coverage of cuts to Express Scripts. For those of you who missed out on it the first time around here is an excerpt, “Well, it looks like the company is hoping that they can do this without a number of workers. They are getting ready to cut back on 258 jobs in order to put itself back on the train to profitability. The company will be cutting the bulk of the jobs in Bergen County, New Jersey, as a cost savings measure, but that will be more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action many times over.”