Napa hospital cutting 100 positions

81 jobs going away, 19 vacant spots eliminated

By NATALIE HOFFMAN
Register Staff Writer

Feeling the pinch of financial challenges, Queen of the Valley Medical Center is eliminating 100 positions — 81 of which are filled.

The cutbacks affect about 5 percent of the organization’s workforce. Nine employees will have their work hours reduced. Positions that have been eliminated or had their hours cut include 43 full-time positions, 37 part-time employees and 10 part-time relief staff, with one-third of them being offered alternate positions, according to a statement from the Queen.

An additional 19 vacant positions at the Queen will remain unfilled, while laid off employees are going to receive 60 days’ notice and severance pay.

The departments most affected by the staff reductions include the Queen’s skilled nursing facility, obstetrics, the clinical laboratory, outpatient surgery, radiology, communications, health information management, human resources and performance improvement, according to Jaime Penaherrera, the Queen’s program director of marketing and communications.

Although the layoffs will not affect any physicians, he said, some nurses will be affected, a portion of whom will be offered alternative nursing positions at the Queen. Penaherrera said the quality of care offered at the facility will not be affected by the changes.

“Queen of the Valley Medical Center patients will continue to receive the high quality of care they have always received despite these most recent changes in staffing. A thorough and thoughtful discernment process has been undertaken by the Queen’s leadership to ensure no gaps in patient care will occur during this time of transition, and that we maintain the high standards for patient care that our staff has so proudly established and sustained since we opened our doors in Napa five decades ago,” wrote Penaherrera in an email.

The changes come on the heels of a $12 million budget shortage attributed to “inadequate reimbursement rates, increases in labor, supply and operating costs, expensive seismic and other regulatory mandates and sharp increases in charity care and bad debt,” according to the Queen’s statement.

Additional cost-saving measures recently implemented at the Queen include “re-negotiating vendor contracts, implementing budget contingency plans, working decreased hours, by sharing resources with sister hospitals within (the) St. Joseph Health System” and other efforts.

Today, the Queen employs approximately 1,660 full- and part-time workers. Following the layoffs, that number will change to a total of about 1,579 employees. The Queen is the third largest employer in Napa, according to the Napa Chamber of Commerce.

“I am so grateful to our staff,” said Dennis Sisto, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer. “They have been implementing several cost-reduction measures over the past several months to help our medical center remain focused on being a good steward of our resources. ... Unfortunately, the reductions are not enough to shore up the entire $12 million budget gap. We must take additional, difficult steps.”

From October to December of 2007, St. Helena Hospital faced a similar budget crunch, laying off 20 employees of the hospital’s total work force of 800. Still, the hospital will not face further layoffs in the near future, said Jeff Davis, St. Helena Hospital’s communications manager.

“There are absolutely no plans for further downsizing at St. Helena Hospital. ... Our focus has been on our core business segments like cardiovascular services, alcohol and dependency recovery programs and diagnostic imaging. ... We’re focusing on new technology and core areas that are traditionally most profitable for most hospitals,” he said.

Davis added that there was no impact on the quality of care at St. Helena Hospital following the layoffs, “because in some cases, we just didn’t fill open positions.”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009