Kaiser to cut 860 information technology jobs
According to SFGate: “Kaiser Permanente is cutting 860 information technology jobs nationwide under a realignment that includes a $500 million deal giving IBM management duties at Kaiser’s medical records data centers.”
“The Oakland health maintenance organization, which has spent as much as $5 billion over the past five years building up its electronic records system, said Monday it has inked a seven-year deal with IBM to maximize the performance of its data processing units.”
“In a separate action, Kaiser is eliminating an additional 160 information technology jobs scattered across 30 locations as it pares back spending due to the impact of the economic downturn.”
“Of the 700 staffers affected by the IBM deal, 500 work at one of the California data centers, which are located in Pasadena, Corona, Napa, Walnut Creek and Irvine”
~News submitted by Jack R.
My husband was 1 of the MANY that got layed off yesterday on March 16. Kaiser has no loyalty to their employees. Here in CA 1000’s upon 1000’s of people & families have been affected. IBM is going to rehire 300 Kaiser employees. They have to interview with IBM over the next couple of weeks…….only to most likely be let go in 9 months. Most people will say well it’s the economy OR Kaiser is cutting back on spending to recuperate money from the economic downturn BUT I’m telling you that’s far from the truth. There’s been talk about becoming a model for a National Health Care System (like Canada). Kaiser really wants to be ready when & if this happens in the future. The US is going to need a national health care system after KP layed off ALL these men & women…..because I’m sure by now they are getting ulcers & becoming depressed. If you’re looking to move to CA…..go for it because there is going to be A LOT more foreclosures in the upcoming months.
What are you talking about? Kaiser has been very faithful to there employees and treats them well, and I think it is silly for you to say otherwise. Kaiser has been suffering financially because if the economic down turn. If you do the research you will see that Kaiser had major losses last year and continues to lose. You should do your research before you put down the company that employeed your husband for god knows how long. In addition to that, how much did you and your husband have to pay for your Kaiser benefits while he was employed with them… oh yea nothing. But Kaiser is not good to their employees? Not being good to the employees would mean them not giving severance packages…. which we all know your husband did get one.
Sorry to tell you Anonymous, you don’t know what you’re talking about regarding severance packages. The 700 folks who’s jobs have been outsourced to IBM haven’t gotten ANYTHING YET - if they even do. I know, my husband is one of the ones loosing his job after many many years of dedicated service working a lot of times 7 days a week 12-15 hours a day…..with no overtime or extra compensation.
Now for severances……yes they are out there…..but only under certain circumstances. For being a dedicated employee for over 2 decades and taking work and a pager with you on vacation so you will be available if needed (and asked to check email daily) with no extra pay, Kaiser says “so what”.
Here’s the severance deal Kaiser is offering the 700 employees that are impacted by the outsourcing deal with IBM. You must interview with IBM or you lose 75% of your severance package. If you are offered a job with IBM and choose to decline it, you lose 75% of your severance. If IBM offers you a job and you accept it - you get NOTHING from Kaiser - NO SEVERANCE!!!! HR has decided to treat an offer from IBM as a “Comparable Position”.
If you don’t understand what that means I suggest you look at the new Kaiser severance policy that was published earlier this year. (Conveniently before this announcement.) Before the change in the policy a “Comparable Position” was defined as a position within Kaiser. Now it includes a position with a “partner” which I guess now includes IBM.
So, if you do what is in Kaiser’s best interest which is to interview honestly with IBM and are offered a job with IBM and you accept that offer, then Kaiser gets the benefit of the knowledge base and you get to forfeit your severance. If you happen to be incompetent or possess no useful skills then you won’t get an offer from IBM and you get your full severance package. Now, where’s the fairness in that?
If Kaiser’s severance policy has been a determining factor in a decision to remain at Kaiser I suggest that you read the new severance policy very carefully.
Kaiser sucks big times. It is a McDonalds in health care. For example physicians are required to see 35 patients per shift. This is about 10 minutes per patient. Doctors simply do not have time to threat the patient, other than saying “take tylenol.. next!”.
I personally like Kaiser, they do have to turn over patients rapidly but in any efficient business you have to be productive, but on the other hand if the physician needs to spend more time with a patient they do. also kaiser has been losing money for about a year now and they tried to hold on to all their employees until they had to cut something, and then they still gave those effected a severance package.
Cut the salaries of the doctors. The doctors union is a separate entity (like the UAW) and negotiate hard with Kaiser Hospital’s. A 10% cut in doctor salaries will bring down expenses big time.
how about cutting some of the excess managers and their salaries. too many chiefs????????
Now there’s a good idea! Cut the docs salaries and then have them give out meds, prep patients for surgery and don’t forget to leave those rooms clean.
They say hope springs eternal.LOL
Where are you getting your “Kaiser had major losses last year and continues to lose”. How would you know? Are they a public company? Do their books need to be scrutinized like any company that reports to the SEC does? NO
The truth is - Kaiser’s losses ALL stem from Wall Street investments. Their membership was forecast to shrink, but it actually grew. Who’s investments did not tank? Since only one(1) mutual fund out of the thousands that existing in the US made money, of course EVERY company lost investments. Get your *hit together before you post BS. The IBM Outsouring deal is lead by a group of CXO’s who will not be around in 3-5 years. KP-IT has had a revolving door of leadership, and it just continues. Stupid, short-term thinking.
“Its Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and subsidiaries posted $307 million in operating income for the quarter, compared to $449 million a year earlier. But those operating profits were overwhelmed by the impact of what Kaiser described as “financial market volatility” during July through September quarter, which ended in the midst of the recent Wall Street crash.”
what he says is true.
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/47208567
Phil Fasan did this before at JP Morgan, worked great!? Wonder what Phil received from IBM then, compared to now? Cars? Cash? Trips? Boats?
Ah, revolving door of Upper Management at KP….great place! He won’t be there long.
I am internal, Kaiser has lost, A LOT, so know what you are talking about before you talk crap. I am aware of Kaiser’s loses, and yes they did lose!!! Kaiser is not exempt from the economy downturn!!!
[...] Kaiser Permanente Layoffs (New) [...]
Outsource, outsource, outsource.
Malpractice lawsuits are the biggest drain on the healthcare system (which is why insurance fees are high). Deport all lawyers to Antarctica and the healthcare costs will come down drastically. The doctors and nurses unions have a role to play but they are not the biggest villains in this story.
While I haven’t worked at Kaiser, I have worked in CA healthcare IT for 22 years. There are many contributing factors to healthcare’s financial woes, but don’t criticize a company for trying to run lean. That is necessary to survive and to do otherwise would be financially irresponsible.
Anyone in healthcare should know every doctors office is required to spend less time with patents than they used to. If they don’t they won’t …survive. Again, while I don’t know the specifics at Kaiser, my guess is if you talked to their doctors they’d tell a tale of reduced income. I can’t imagine any CA healthcare system where the doctors haven’t seen a reduction in income and an increase in workload. That’s life these days.
And just because someone uses a similar management approach as at a previous job doesn’t mean the approach is bad. It more likely means they were happy with the prior results and thus know how to get those results again.
i currently work for kaiser and the one thing people are not talking about is that kaiser is middle management heavy.there are layers apon layers of management running around this place.when someone/manager looses their job they seem to relocate these people elswere.you eventually have recycled loosers/managers everwhere.
Since you are working for Kaiser, I’m sure you heard about LMP and Liason, do you think they are that much better with them running all the departments. Yes, there are plently of recylcing managers, but there are plenty of bad union employees that Kaiser will not stand up or back up their management to get rid of them. If you do work for Kaiser, I’m sure you know what I meant.
they relocate alot, which is good people get to keep their job. I hate to dee anyone loose a job.
This is the ex-Kaiser Employee. Every 5 years, there is a new CEO and change of leadership with constant reorganization. CIO will hire new management and add new layers of management. CIO, Vice President, Chief of XXXXXX, Executive director, senior director, director, senior manager, manager, and supervisor are some of the tittles. Each manager hires the next manager to do his job.
CIO has little experience in Health Care and know little about Kaiser operates in such complicated applications, hardware and software systems. Kaiser does not promote and grow leaders from within. Failed and lost billion-dollar projects like CIS, Foundation System,etc.
CEO travels most of his time and writing book instead of managing the company.
No disaster recovery exercises for years and non-compliance with regulation.
I just saw these blogs, after speaking with former co-workers at Kaiser regarding layoffs. I worked for Kaiser Permanente, in their IT Department, and left five years ago. Outsourcing was being discussed even back then in 2004. They were slowly but surely putting in new equipment, sending us to training, and then not letting us touch the equipment when we returned. We were told that all moves, adds, & changes would be handled by the company who sold us the equipment. The writing was on the wall at that time.
I agree with several of you that the unions (especially Local 250) definitely run the facilities. There is no partnership - it’s whatever the union says. And most of the union reps that are sent from Local 250 are uneducated and unintelligent people who are former Kaiser employees.
Currently I know of one union employee who is going through a divorce and uses her Kaiser email account to harass and torment her soon-to-be ex-husband at his work. Of course she can’t be getting much work done during the time that she’s composing these emails, but will anyone even notice? Probably not. And if they did, I’m sure she’d receive a slap on the wrist and return to work. Not to mention, she’ll receive her raise on her next paycheck, while all of the non-union/non-exempts (NUNEs)and exempts will have to wait until KP is good and ready to give it to them.
In our IT Department, we once came up with the idea of unionizing, but to get everyone in California to do the same was difficult. We did the research and even met with a prospective union to represent us, but again, it would’ve been very difficult to get everyone together. We hung union signs on our doors (like in the movie Norma Rae LOL) and they were promptly ripped down by management.
Personally, I think what’s good for one group should be good for another. If KP truly wants to do a reduction in force, let it be among all groups, including union employees. There are just as many of them that are lazy and unproductive as there are in management and support personnel.
Get over it you babys! Man up and go get another job. I was a KPIT employee for 5 years, layed around either sleeping all day at home or when I did come in which was rare because I had remote access, like everyone else in IT, I would go to my office, close the door and nap.
The serverence package? Mine was 6 months salary total, plus the annual bonus, plus all unused vacation days. So if anyone says Kaiser IT is a bad place to work its because they didn’t have the brains to work the system and they let the system work them!
Any one have the detailed information about the coming June layoff at KPIT? Rumor says that it is about 30%.
Anyone can comment or have any word on Dave’s 06/13 comment below ?
“[Comment #7367] Dave says:
June 13, 2009 at 10:08 amAny one have the detailed information about the coming June layoff at KPIT? Rumor says that it is about 30%.”
You are all stupid. There are 3 divisions of KP. The Med Group, The Physician Group and Permanente Hospital Group. All are separate.
I worked in KP-IT for a few years and left 10 years agao. I left because they were spending millions
and millions of dollars on IBM and SAIC contractors who didn’t produce much after several years and I
didn’t like it. Kaiser management spent money on remodeling buidings for them, brought in brand new
furniture for them and treated them like royalty. I was approached by SAIC and IBM to become one of
their system architects but turned them down. I guess I should have taken their offers. Preparations for major takeovers and layoffs were planned over a decade ago as I see it. The writing was on the wall. Keeping the IT workers there for the last ten years was just to buy IBM time to pull off the major conversions until it was near completion so there wouldn’t be a mass exodus of KP-IT workers all at the same time. I’m better off I guess, I became a technical analysis trader.
The typical salary of a physician (Family Practice) is 140-160K/year. This is after 2 years in college, 4 years in medical school, 3 years residency.
Re: “A 10% cut in doctor salaries will bring down expenses big time” –
Dude, you are aiming the wrong target. The insurance mafia collects billions of bucks each years in ‘bonuses’. Have you heard about AIG recently? If so, well, this is the way it works.
Blame insurance companies, not a doctors who are working hard saving lives.
KP-IT just needs to unionize, just like the nurses have done. Those that are left should contact:
http://www.cwu.org/
http://www.t-mobileunion.org/
A mass strike by these workers would cause major issues, and force management to sit down. Do it now, or forever hold your peace!
HIPAA, HIPAA, HIPAA
In other words, there would be a problem with IT outsourcing due to Kaiser’s HIPAA compliance.
Dude, do you work for Kaiser? All Kaiser 3 entities are essentially controlled by Physician group. Anyone goes against the physicians (including the high level leaderships) will be gone somehow. Kaiser Physicians works for based salary plus partnership bonus, most of then do work very hard and make less than outside physicians with a lot more patients to see every day, but they do get paid OK and they always are the last company entity to get cut if any. If Kaiser can cut the same way arcoss all entities including Union employees, this will improve moral and service. In case you don’t work for Kaiser, it is almost impossible to get rid of any union employees, plus Labor Management Partnership which basically let the Union employees (mainly the so call “Liason” run the company except they are not trained well or qualified to run any departments. All of them eventually became supervisors or managers, you figure) Yes, there are plenty of bad managers who should be gone, but who should be cut first, always non-union employees, most of them do work long hours with no overtime.
Re: “Anyone goes against the physicians (including the high level leaderships) will be gone somehow” — just curious, how come physicians could control the IT peoples career?