UMass hospitals will cut 350 jobs

http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2010/10/13/feeling_squeezed_umass_hospitals_will_cut_350_jobs/?p1=Local_Links

By Robert Weisman
Globe Staff / October 13, 2010

Strained by flat patient volume and pressure from health insurers, UMass Memorial Health Care, which runs five hospitals, said yesterday it will eliminate about 350 jobs or nearly 2.6 percent of its workforce — the largest hospital cutback in Massachusetts this year.

The health care system, which operates the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester and four community hospitals in Central Massachusetts, said it expects to lay off 130 workers, freeze 120 vacant jobs, and shed the equivalent of 100 jobs by reducing overtime and shifting employees from full time to part time. The system employs 13,700 workers.

“We’re trying to prepare our selves for the longer term,’’ John G. O’Brien, chief executive of Worcester-based UMass Memorial Health Care, said in an interview. “We don’t think the pressure on hospitals to reduce costs will abate for several years.’’

The staff reductions will affect a range of hospital workers, from nurses and pharmacists to finance and marketing managers. The cost-cutting comes at a time when the 1,125-bed health care system is still making money, though profits are down; it is on course to post an operating gain of $50 million this year, compared with $84 million last year.

UMass Memorial Health Care’s financial problems are the latest evidence of how severely the weak economy and the push to rein in health care costs are taking their toll on hospitals, a pillar of the Massachusetts economy once thought to be immune to downturns. A growing number of the state’s hospitals — particularly those, like UMass Memorial Medical Center, that serve many low-income patients on Medicaid — are feeling the pinch.

Last month, Boston Medical Center, which treats many of the city’s neediest patients, said it would pare 119 jobs from a workforce of 6,000, a 1.9 percent reduction. Across the Charles River, the Cambridge Health Alliance, which runs so-called safety net hospitals in Cambridge, Somerville, and Everett, has cut hundreds of jobs over the past 18 months, though many of its cuts took place in 2009.

FULL 2 page story at link.

along with all the lawyers on retainer who will handle the lawsuits after short staffing causes more deaths.