Hospital budgets and cuts

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So today at work we were gathered for a meeting and basically told of impending budget doom. We were told that after making 350,000 in budget adjustments that our department needed $156,000 more in savings and cuts. We were told the hospital as a whole has halted all hiring and any hiring needs would have to be approved by a Vice President of something or other. Two of our open tech positions will be cut which will save about $68,000 and they are asking for volunteers to go to .9. They also require us to give back any overtime we accrue by leaving early or coming in late. The CRNA's of the hospital have been told they will be made salary and that means no OT which means they can be worked hard for little compensation. They have raised nurse patient ratios and We were told not to expect raises this year while the doctor's and executives are still receiving 40,000-2,000,000 bonuses. Management keeps telling us that these things come in waves and things will get better but they aren't the ones who are expecting to be laid off. They are telling us these are preemptive measures due to the fact that we will receive 50 million less in compensation next year even though they made 138 million and hospitals that don't take aggressive actions will be in trouble. Is anyone else out there experiencing these actions in their place of employment and where are you located?

Northeastern pa

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Specializes in ER.

We are in the same boat. My unit is now the "float pool" of the hospital because they eliminated the float pool to get rid of the extra 4 bucks an hour they paid the nurses. They also quit hiring stepdown nurses so often we wind up over there. The department I used to work in also hired about 15-20 nurses part-time, hence why I did not stay because I knew I would never get fulltime.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.

nurses would be day labor if hospitals thought they could get away with it.

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Yup. Patient ratios have gone way up--who cares if the patient suffers or not.

They should get rid of the middle managers---too many in charge, and too little that actually do the work.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

shameful.....:no:

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

OP: You were told that bonuses for admin were that amount, or is that a rumor?

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Specializes in LTC, Psych, M/S.

I suspect we will be reading many more posts such as this in the upcoming months.

The ACA is changing reimbursement rates, to my understanding. Hospitals get less, primary care/outpatient care, ect gets more. The goal is to keep people out of the hospitals.

The hospitals in my locale announced last week that they are "joining." I live in a rural area and they are 30 miles apart. They are now expecting nurses to float between the 2 facilities.

I am glad I don't work on acute care right now.

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Specializes in Emergency.
I suspect we will be reading many more posts such as this in the upcoming months.

The ACA is changing reimbursement rates, to my understanding. Hospitals get less, primary care/outpatient care, ect gets more. The goal is to keep people out of the hospitals.

The hospitals in my locale announced last week that they are "joining." I live in a rural area and they are 30 miles apart. They are now expecting nurses to float between the 2 facilities.

I am glad I don't work on acute care right now.

Sad...even this is once again being "blamed" on the ACA...its very simple people...the USA has lost its union base-workers have no rights and big companies will continue to do this(By the way...they have been doing this for years when workers rights are reduced-example 1-"right to work states")....what are you going to do? Quit? You are expendable...To say "I am glad I do not work in acute care..." is a cop out akin to shrinks sending people to AA meetings...we are not addressing the rampant underlying issues...we should stay in our jobs...we must band together and we must fight the oligarchy...at this point the ACA is a nominal band-aide.

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Specializes in LTC, Psych, M/S.

http://m.ellwoodcityledger.com/mobile/news/local_news/jameson-examining-hospital-consolidation/article_5b7eae26-945a-5e36-b36b-8b62ba0c95fd.html

This is just one example - google it for yourself- there are many more stories like this. And many about hospitals laying off staff, as well. My facility recently added nurse positions .

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OP: You were told that bonuses for admin were that amount, or is that a rumor?

Actually they didn't have to tell us. Every year our local newspaper puts in the top 75-100 earners bonuses and salary. These consisted of admins and physicians. I guess they can do that because we are a non profit hospital. Our lead physician in our dept took a 10% pay cut and challenged others in our dept to do the same and our boss said that out docs declined. One of our docs has explained he gets his 40,000 bonus by the amount of procedures done, a limited amount of procedural delays, going to grand rounds amongst other things. Our CEO saw his salary doubled last year.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

If you work for a not-for-profit hospital, you can get specific information on executive compensation by looking up your organization's form 990 - this is an annual report that has to be submitted to the IRS. Just go to GuideStar nonprofit reports and Forms 990 for donors, grantmakers and businesses and create your free account... then you can search for your organization and look up the 990's for the past few years. The form is very extensive - compensation can be ~ 50 pages in, so just scroll until you find them.

US healthcare is caught in a squeeze play... feeling the effects of reimbursement cuts that were legislated quite a few years ago. Many of these pre-date Obama. At the same time, there are unprecedented declines in hospital admissions all over the country. Experts are telling us that this is due to an evolutionary process - it's a natural result of better access to preventative services & hospitals will continue to shrink.

US legislation has targeted healthcare funding in order to compensate for the ginormous defense budget... in hopes of stemming our freefall into even more deficit spending. Congress is clueless - more concerned with bipartisan bickering & getting re-elected than the very predictable consequences of their actions.

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It is happening every where in America. Nursing is not a good stable profession anymore

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