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Critical Condition
St. Vincent's announces layoffs, service cuts
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Business New Haven
7/7/2003
By: BNH
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BRIDGEPORT - On July 1 St. Vincent's Medical Center announced that it would pink-slip 70 employees and shutter its Wellness Department to pare $20 million from the hospital's annual operating budget.
The hospital employs some 1,800 workers at the Bridgeport medical center and another 900 at other facilities.
The layoffs come after the hospital's commissioned a review by a Florida hospital-consulting company, the Hunter Group. The consultants benchmarked St. Vincent's against other hospitals to determine where the hospital could improve efficiency and save money.
For its 2004 fiscal year, beginning July 1, St. Vincent's has projected expenditures of $238,332,718 and total revenues of $226,314,818, according to Ronald J. Bianchi, St. Vincent's corporate senior vice president.
The layoffs, most of which were immediately effective, spared nurses and other employees involved in direct patient care. Instead, clerical, financial, purchasing, security and information systems workers were to be let go.
The layoffs, said Bianchi, would save several million dollars.
He said that a number of laid-off workers would be able to apply for open positions and others would be permitted to use their seniority to bump other employees.
Also to cut costs, St. Vincent's said it would eliminate unsupported wellness programs. These include corporate and community health fairs, flu shots and CPR training. Other supported wellness programs would be incorporated into other hospital departments.
Bianchi blamed unanticipated expenses, including the need to restore $14 million in recent stock-market losses into the hospital's pension fund over the next five years, as well as inadequate reimbursements by state and federal governments and managed care companies for the cuts.
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