The healthcare law is a convenient scapegoat for hospitals looking to downsize staff and reallocate labor costs to other initiatives. Meanwhile, feds mandate home health workers' minimum wage and OT pay.
In this week's healthcare HR news round-up, hospitals and the media are blaming major layoffs on the PPACA when they're simply restructuring. Home healthcare workers win federally mandated minimum wage and overtime pay, while executives and nurse managers are outed for stealing from patients, and a regular citizen pretends to be a hospital worker.
Hospitals lay off workers, blame the PPACA
Hospitals are blaming healthcare reform for business shifts that are important to improve the quality and efficiency of our healthcare system. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is just giving many hospitals an excuse to lay responsibility for strategically motivated layoffs on someone else.
Last Wednesday morning, Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Toby Cosgrove, M.D., announced to his 44,000 employees that there would be an unspecified number of layoffs as a part of an effort to reduce the health system's 2014 budget by $330 million, or 6%.
Cosgrove cited the PPACA as one of the reasons behind the cuts, singing a similar tune to the dozens of other hospitals across the country that have announced layoffs in recent weeks and blamed the law.
These budget cuts and layoffs aren't holding back hospitals and health systems from making investments in other areas, such as mergers and acquisitions or facility upgrades. At the same time that Cleveland Clinic is cutting $330 million, it has formed a tentative deal with Community Health Systems to acquire Akron General Health System.
As the Clinic's spokesperson told the Akron Beacon Journal, "This can't all be about cost-cutting. We have to grow."
Here's a shortlist of related articles this week:
- CEO says fewer inpatients, fed funds prompted layoffs at Taos hospital
- Summa reportedly notifies employees of layoffs
- IU Health cuts 800 jobs despite profit rise
- PRMC announces 58 layoffs; 130 tendered buyout offers
- Barnabas Health lays off employees, cites healthcare reform
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center cutting several hundred more jobs
Who is roaming your hallways?
Three stories were in the news last week about hospital workers, and wannabes, behaving badly. This kind of news makes patients nervous about who is treating them, and wonder who is in charge.
A lawsuit filed in 2011 by former employees, released in federal court last week, accused leadership at Vanderbilt University Medical Center of committing Medicare fraud for decades.
Jeff Balser, M.D., Ph.D., the head of VUMC, is accused of being the ring leader. The suit claims Balser, who worked in the anesthesiology department at the time, collaborated with other physicians to design software that perpetuated its illegal billing practices through its medical records system. VUMC is vehemently denying the allegations.
Meanwhile, in Syracuse, NY, a 20-year employee of St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center plead guilty last week to the accusation that she stole $900,000 from patients for over 11 years at the hospital. She allegedly stole money from patients who thought they were paying for television and phone services.
What's the difference between Bonnie Simson, a former nurse manager at the hospital, and Nurse Jackie? Simson isn't accused of stealing narcotics from the hospital, but she was using the money to pay for her painkiller addiction, which cost her between $900 and $1,500 a day, the Post-Standard reports.
Grant Medical Center in Columbus, OH, is watching its hallways a little more closely this week after a woman posing as an employee was reported wandering near the maternity and infant care wings last week. Hospital security assured the local community that the trespasser, who was wearing scrubs and a stethoscope, was unable to access the care unit. In both instances, the woman was escorted from the hospital and hospital officials have filed a criminal complaint.
Minimum wages and OT mandated for home health workers
Last Tuesday, the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division approved the final rule expanding the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. Two million direct care workers, home health aides, personal care aides, and certified nursing assistants will be affected by this change, a group whose work falls under "domestic services" and whose federal labor laws haven't been updated in 38 years.
Direct care workers remain one of the lowest-paid sectors of the service sector, and so improving their training, as well as the quality of the care provided by these workers, was becoming increasingly difficult.
Effective January 1, 2015, the exemptions to minimum wage for those who simply provide "companionship services" now can only be claimed by individuals, and no longer by staffing agencies. Those workers are defined as individuals who are hired primarily for companionship, protection, and basic care needs by an elderly individual or their family, now excluding any direct care workers who provide services that require medical training.
The overtime pay protections can substantially raise the salaries of these workers, who often work long hours to care for people needing independent, round-the-clock care. Medicare and Medicaid costs are expected to increase by under three-tenths of 1% of what federal and state governments spend on the program.
The final rule, according to the Department of Labor, reflects the trend that more elderly wish to have their medical care provided at home instead of a nursing or long-term care facility, and increasingly rely on home care professionals with medical training.
Chelsea Rice is an associate editor for HealthLeaders Media.
