Samaritan lays off 45 staff

MOSES LAKE — Samaritan Healthcare is laying off 45 employees and decreasing work hours for 15 employees.

The reductions give the hospital about $3.7 million to invest in new equipment necessary to provide quality care, said Andrew Bair, president and chief executive officer.

“This gets us down to a 2.7 percent margin for our bottom line,” Bair said. “This is still much lower than what we would like, but we are fairly certain we have taken some drastic measures as it is.”

Bair met with the hospital’s senior leadership group and director’s staff this week to determine the affected departments. The final decision was made through benchmarking, a process of looking at the staffing at hospitals of a similar size. The hospital employs 540 people.

“The departments that are already running very lean had no layoffs and those that were overstaffed were focused on,” Bair said. “We are looking at them closely, figuring out what the reductions would look like to the department. We have some processes to work out first before we eventually reduce those areas.”

Departments losing staff include: administration, billing, nutritional services, social services, interpreters, purchasing, admitting, human resources, medical records, nursing administration, education, quality, imaging, pharmacy, surgery, special care unit, medical surgical unit and the obstetrics unit.

Administration is sending notification to staff members being let go today.

“We sent an e-mail out yesterday, updating everyone on what has been going on,” Bair said, Thursday morning. “We have started having meetings with individuals and are finishing up the conversations Friday.”

Laid off employees are receiving severance pay and the hospital’s human resource department is working with them, giving them resources and aid for job placement at other places, Bair said.

“We’re doing all we can to make this as easy on the individuals as possible,” Bair said. “It’s so hard. We are letting people go that are here to take care of community members and it is no fault of their own they are being asked to leave.”

Samaritan started seeing financial losses during the summer. The reductions allow the hospital to afford increased maintenance costs, provide reasonable salaries and maintain current equipment, Bair said.

“Maintaining and buying new equipment was the big reason for this,” Bair explained. “For example, our nurse call system is a $3,000 piece of equipment and we have to have one to run a hospital. It allows our patients to call out to the nurses’ station when they need help and we simply cannot run efficiently without it.”

Hospital beds cost between $12,000 and $48,000 each.

“We don’t have extra fancy beds, but it costs that much for a reason,” Bair said. “People confined to a bed usually have special needs and a lot of technology goes into it.”

Samaritan board members projected a $67 million operating budget for 2010 last week, a 1 percent increase from last year.

Reductions decreased the salary budget by 5.7 percent, meaning the hospital is decreasing salaries and wages through layoffs. This allows employees to receive raises they were promised and some to receive a cost of living increase.

“The reduction in force gets us to where we need to be as far as staffing goes,” Bair said.

Some existing staff may have to take on more responsibilities after reductions are finalized. For example, some nurses will be asked to train to serve in the obstetrics unit and emergency room.

“In some areas we are shifting staff to become more efficient,” Bair said. “They may have to go through some extra training and be a little more flexible. We will help them however we can and will be getting in touch with them soon about their options.”

Bair said Samaritan is still focused on providing the same quality of care to their patients.

The hospital is financially stable now, Bair said.

“The hospital could run this place for 130 days without getting paid,” he said. “Our commitment to providing quality care is still being carried out.”

Bair is concerned about how existing staff feels as well, he said.

“I’m particularly concerned about the morale of this place,” Bair said. “We just have to remember we are there to take care of people in the community and that we have a great group of people working here that do a fantastic job.”