LayoffBlog.com

The chief executive of Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, WA will be replaced as part of a major restructuring of executive ranks by the hospital’s owner. The changes come as the hospital deals with the effects of the recession and faces potential ramifications of changes to the nation’s health care system.

Source: TheOlympian

Fifty-one workers at Baystate Franklin Medical Center will lose their jobs in December as the hospital closes several behavioral health services in an attempt to cope with an operating loss which last year totaled $1.6 million.

Source: MassLive.com

Wednesday, healthcare centers operator Sun Healthcare Group, Inc. announced a reduction in its earnings forecast for fiscal 2009, to reflect changes in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. To mitigate the impact, the company said, it would reduce an unspecified number of jobs.

Source: RTTNews

Suffering from flat admissions growth, rising costs and growing numbers of uninsured and underinsured patients, Pocatello-based Portneuf Medical Center announced Sept. 9 it is cutting 40 full-time positions from its 1,279 employee work force.

Source: IdahoBusiness.net

MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island confirmed today that it plans to lay off 120 employees, citing the recession and its impact on hospital admissions.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Changes are underway for Danaher (DHR), the maker of tools and medical technology devices, as the company announced a series of acquisitions alongside expedited restructuring measures meant to eliminate 3,300 jobs.

Source: TheStreet

Berkshire Medical Center and Berkshire Health Systems will announce another round of job cuts Tuesday. The reduction in staff will affect 65 full time employees, both union and non-union positions.

Source: News10

WakeMed announced Friday that it will eliminate 85 positions in anticipation of a $35 million budget shortfall in the coming year. The hospital system is the county’s largest private employer, with 7,576 clinical and non-clinical personnel.

Source: MyNC.com

Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday disclosed plans to eliminate 1,200 jobs in Northern California (about 2 percent of its Northern California workforce), citing uncertainties over the economy, federal health care legislation and shrinking reimbursements for Medicare.

The jobs will be eliminated in the Bay Area, the Sacramento region, and the Central Valley area south to Fresno, Kaiser spokesman Jim Caroompas said.

Roughly one-third of the affected positions are temporary, on-call, or short-hour positions. All 1,200 of the positions are unionized.

Source: The Oakland Tribune

Kindred Healthcare filed a notice with Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation that it intends to lay off 573 employees statewide.

Source: BusinessFirstOfLouisville

~News submitted by upthecreek

The composite second-quarter earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index are expected to drop 31% from a year earlier, compared with a decline of 35% predicted last week.
Declines are expected in nine of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 Index from a year earlier. The health-care sector is the only one expecting an increase in earnings, of 2%.

Source: WSJ

California: Mammoth Hospital officials have laid out the fact that 20 staff members will either leave voluntarily or face lay-off in July. Monday’s meeting also revealed that the hospital has lost as much as $3.3 million a year for “several years.”

Source: SierraWave

~News submitted by upthecreek

Okemos-based Delta Dental, for instance, has laid off 30 people and will lay off 30 more now that nearly 300,000 retirees from General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, their spouses and dependents no longer have company-provided dental coverage. The 60 lost jobs are 10 percent of Delta’s work force.

Source: CNBC, AP

~News submitted by upthecreek

Medtronic Inc. (NYSE: MDT) will eliminate about 1,500 to 1,800 jobs from its global workforce [of 39,000] by the end of June amid efforts to control costs and manage economic pressures.

Chief Executive William A. Hawkins noted in February some other internal moves designed to control costs, such as a salary freeze that started in the fiscal year that began in late April and plans for a 5% executive pay cut.

Source: CNNMoney

Sutter Health, which runs many of the Bay Area’s largest hospitals and medical groups, is cutting 121 information technology jobs at its Information Services department in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento.

Sutter, a 26-hospital system based in Sacramento, said the move came in response “to the continued economic downturn affecting the health-care industry and all California employers.”

Source: San Francisco Business Times

Pfizer Inc. says it will provide 70 of its most widely prescribed prescription drugs – including Lipitor and Viagra – free to people who have lost their jobs and their health insurance.

The world’s biggest drugmaker said yesterday it will give the drugs away for up to a year to Americans who have lost jobs since Jan. 1 and have been on a widely used Pfizer drug for three months or longer.

Source: The Start

North Carolina’s unemployment rate reached 9.7 percent in January and it is likely to keep climbing for the rest of this year, which means the employer-subsidized health insurance coverage is going to be cut for tens of thousands of workers.

But thousands more who still work may lose their insurance anyway as small businesses have to choose between offering health care or laying off employees. Other workers may see deductibles rise so high they’ll only be able to use their insurance for catastrophic emergencies.

~News submitted by upthecreek

Source: CNBC

The American Medical Association is laying off about 100 workers, or 8 percent of its staff, to “offset declining revenues amid the ongoing economic downturn,” the Chicago-based national doctors group said this afternoon.

The staff cuts at the nation’s largest doctor group will trim “open and existing staff positions” at both its Chicago headquarters and Washington offices effective May 4, the AMA said. The AMA has about 1,200 staffers.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Walgreens and Take Care Health Systems on Tuesday launched an initiative to offer free health care services to all of its current and future patients who lose their jobs after March 31 and have no health insurance.

The Take Care Recovery Plan offer applies to most services currently provided at the Take Care Clinics.
The plan includes treatment of:

• Respiratory Illnesses, such as colds, sinus infections, bronchitis and strep throat.
• Common Conditions, such as seasonal allergies and pink eye.
• Skin Conditions, such as dry skin, poison ivy, minor skin infections and burns.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

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.