Baystate Health added 74 employees last year going from 5,214 to 5,287.
This is an updated version of a story posted at 12:06 this afternoon.
SPRINGFIELD – Baystate Health is eliminating 354 jobs across all three of its hospitals – Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Baystate Mary Lane in Ware and Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield.
The job loss includes 185 positions that are currently vacant. There will be 169 layoffs among managers and staff. The cuts are effective Aug. 19. Workers, who were advised of the layoffs Wednesday morning, will get severance pay.
The action comes as the health system is in the midst of a nearly $300 million “Hospital of the Future” expansion project.
Baystate, the region’s largest private employer, added jobs last year; its workforce at the time of the layoffs stood at 10,064. Baystate Medical Center is the region’s only top-level trauma center and is expected to see 114,000 emergency-room patients this year.
In a news release issued Wednesday afternoon, Baystate executives blamed the cutbacks on the state’s efforts to contain health-care costs.
The state has frozen Medicaid reimbursement rates while the costs for providing those services have risen by 3 to 4 percent a year, according to the hospital's statement.
12.01.2010 | SPRINGFIELD - Construction on Baystate Medical Center's "Hospital of the Future" in December, 2010.BAYSTATE HEALTH: PREVIOUS LAYOFFS
September 9, 2009: Baystate Franklin Medical Center plans the closure of several behavioral health services as it copes with a 2008 operating loss totaling $1.6 million.
November 5, 2008: Facing an estimated $37 million budget deficit, Baystate Health announces the elimination of 120 vacant positions and the layoffs of 55 managers and staff.
April 9, 2003: Baystate Health announces the elimination of 119 jobs. Under the plan, 68 employees will lose their jobs at Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, and 51 workers will be let go in Springfield and East Longmeadow.
September 29, 1998: Baystate Health announces plans to cut 109 jobs, including 87 employees in primarily non-patient care jobs, managerial level employees and vacant positions. 26 full-time workers in Baystate Medical Center’s laundry department are among those who lose their jobs.
September 3, 1997: Baystate Health cuts 198 jobs. The cuts include the layoffs of 161 Baystate Medical Center employees; another 37 vacant positions are eliminated. Hospital officials say the cuts will save $10 million.
August 28, 1996: The Republican reports that a restructuring plan for Baystate Health will require up to 2,000 Baystate Medical Center employees to reapply for their jobs.
October 25, 1995: Baystate Medical Center confirms the elimination of 180 positions, but notes that the cuts did not include any involuntary layoffs.
August 9, 1995: The Republican reports: “Faced with falling revenues and a decline in the average length of time patients spend in the hospital, Baystate Medical Center has offered early retirement to about 200 employees, almost 4 percent of its workforce.”
September 22, 1994: Facing a deficit of $3 million, Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield -- part of Baystate Health -- announces it will lay off an undetermined number of employees. The hospital had laid off four administrators and a chaplain in 1992, and cut four nursing positions in 1991.
August 31, 1992: The Republican reports that, with 4,401 employees, Baystate Medical Center is Springfield’s largest employer.
The three hospitals were underpaid $26.5 million by the state for the cost of care for Medicaid patients in 2010, Baystate said. Medicaid patients represent 26 percent of the patient population at its three hospitals.
Also, patient volumes are down, according to the statement.
Baystate senior leaders project a $25 million budget shortfall this year; the shortfall would grow to $54 million in 2012 if expenses were not reduced.
The story has been much the same at other area health-care facilities.
In May, Sisters of Providence Health Systems laid off 19 full- and part-time administrative workers from its staff of 3,113. Sisters of Providence, which includes Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Providence Behavioral Hospital in Holyoke, Weldon Rehabilitative Hospital in Springfield and Brightside for Families and Children in Holyoke also reduced the hours of 45 employees by between two and 20 hours a week. Sisters of Providence laid off 163 to close a $14 million budget deficit for 2010.
In April, Noble Hospital in Westfield either cut to part-time or eliminated 25 jobs from a staff of 600.
In Northampton, Cooley-Dickinson Hospital eliminated 30 full-time-equivalent jobs in May of 2010 in the face of a projected $4 million deficit for the year.Those job losses came on top of 100 positions there were eliminated the previous two years.
All told, there are 60,900 people in Greater Springfield who work in the health care and education sectors of the economy, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That total has risen by 1.5 percent in the last 12 months.
The jobs being lost are well paid positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median wage for a health-care practitioner in a technical field is $62,720 a year. Health-care support workers earn a median annual income of $28,340.
Baystate’s cutbacks will not impact the $296 million, 640,000-square-foot “Hospital of the Future” project. The first phase of that project, including the Davis Family Heart and Vascular Center, is on time and on budget and will open in March, according to a news release. The project also includes a 70,000-square-foot emergency room.
Baystate has saved millions of dollars by consolidating the costs of materials and supplies for non-clinical services. It is also working to grow its health New England Insurance arm.
