HOSPITAL OFFERS BUYOUTS
Brigham and Women’s targeting 1,600 workers, citing higher costs
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is offering buyouts to 1,600 workers, likely a first step before layoffs, the hospital said, as one of the hospital’s biggest unions said it is watching closely to make sure there is no impact on patient care.
“If this results in the cutbacks of any staffing levels or an increase of nurses taking on more patients, we will strongly oppose these efforts because it will endanger patients,” said David Schildmeier, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents nurses at Brigham and Women’s. “It can’t be at the expense of patient care.”
Yesterday, Brigham and Women’s said it would offer “generous” buyouts to 1,600 employees, focusing on employees “whose careers are winding down.” The hospital said pressure from government and insurers to cut health care costs has hurt profit margins.
“This is a challenging time for the health care industry. Our expenses continue to rise while constraints by government and payers are keeping our revenues flat,” the company said in a statement. “This is negatively affecting our financial health, and we need to work differently in order to sustain our mission for the future.”
Brigham and Women’s said the typical acceptance rate for similar buyouts is about 30 percent. A hospital spokeswoman said layoffs would likely come next if not enough employees take the buyout, but that will not be clear until the end of the buyout program in late July.
Schildmeier said the union is not opposed to the buyout offer itself, but questioned why Brigham and Women’s parent company, Partners HealthCare, is expanding out of state while looking to trim costs.
“Partners is building their empire at the same time they’re asking people to leave their jobs,” Schildmeier said. “We think their priority should be patient care.”
Richard Frank, a professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy, said Massachusetts is one of the states most concerned with rising health care costs, and it is not surprising Brigham and Women’s is feeling the pressure.
“The folks that are looking at prices here are looking at the prices of high-cost providers and the big teaching hospitals,” Frank said. “That kind of pressure and the anticipation of potentially more of that pressure is probably what’s driving this.”
Both Frank and Brigham and Women’s said the ongoing questions over the future of Obamacare and its potential replacement didn’t play a major role in the decision to offer buyouts, but it likely didn’t help.
“Uncertainty never helps,” Frank said. “In some instances you take uncertainty and plan for the worst.”
Brigham and Women’s was formed from the 1980 merger of three Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals — the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, and the Boston Hospital for Women — according to the hospital’s website.