Sacred Heart to lay off 174

Sacred Heart Medical Center announced Monday it will lay off 174 workers, including the vast majority of its licensed practical nurses.

Hospital executives blamed the layoffs on an unexpected leap in charity cases and patients not paying their bills, a problem plaguing hospitals nationwide.

Sacred Heart is $6 million behind in its budget, but the cuts will allow the hospital to finish the year with a 3 percent profit.

During the first six months of the year, the region’s largest hospital showed a $577,670 profit. But that was down from a $4.6 million profit during the same period last year.

Laid-off workers “are making the ultimate sacrifice to help stabilize the medical center,” said hospital Chief Executive Officer Skip Davis at a news conference. “May God bless every one of them.”

While LPNs are the hardest-hit by the layoffs, the cuts also will affect food service workers, secretaries, pharmacy technicians and workers in departments that use high-tech devices to diagnose and treat patients without an overnight stay. Some managers will be laid off or their hours will be reduced.

No registered nurses were laid off. The Washington State Nurses Association, which represents the nurses, will work with hospital management to reach mutually agreeable staffing levels after the LPNs are laid off, said a union spokeswoman. The nurses union represents more than 1,200 RNs at Sacred Heart.

The LPNs are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1001. Their first contract, which includes other employee groups, was ratified in January 2003.

New competition from Spokane doctors’ offices hasn’t helped the hospital. Some offices now offer the same high-tech radiology, nuclear medicine and heart catheterization labs that the hospital does, leading to a decline in hospital patients, said Sacred Heart President Mike Wilson.

The layoffs will come in two waves: By the end of this month, 86 people will lose their jobs and another 28 will have reduced hours. By the end of October, 88 LPNs will lose their jobs.

The LPNs will be replaced with both higher-paid registered nurses and lower-paid certified nursing assistants, including about 60 new workers, Wilson said. The hospital plans to hire about 40 registered nurses and 20 to 25 certified nursing assistants to replace the LPNs in the fall.

In Washington state, LPNs require supervision from registered nurses in some tasks involving doctors’ orders. That leads to redundancy, Wilson said.

Hospitals nationwide are moving away from staffing with LPNs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Sacred Heart has not replaced an LPN for five years, Wilson said.

LPNs can provide basic care, such as taking vital signs, applying dressings and collecting samples for testing. But certified nursing assistants can do much of that work, too. They cannot, however, give medications, which LPNs can do.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, the average registered nurse made $48,090 in 2002. That year, the average LPN made $31,440 and nurses’ assistants made less than $20,000.

Some of the Sacred Heart LPNs are longtime employees with 25 years of service at the hospital, said Bob Barker, representative of Local 1001.

Barker said the severance package offered today to the LPNs “is far less than what our contract calls for.” The union and hospital will continue to negotiate on severance for the LPNs, Barker said.

The union received notice of the layoffs 40 minutes before the news conference Monday, Barker said.

“I’m outraged we were not involved in this process,” Barker said. “We should have been sitting at the table long before now.”

Sacred Heart LPN Francesca Bouck tried to observe the Monday afternoon news conference where hospital managers announced the layoffs, but was asked to leave. Several hospital security workers were called, but Bouck left on her own without being escorted out.

After the news conference, Bouck talked to reporters. Her husband is a laid-off Kaiser Aluminum steelworker, she said.

“This (layoff) was not supposed to target a single group,” Bouck said. “That’s why we unionized.”

Reductions in hours and attrition bring the total staff reductions to 191 full-time equivalent positions, which is just under 6 percent of Sacred Heart’s 3,254 FTEs. The hospital is Spokane County’s largest private employer.

Layoffs are also possible at Holy Family Hospital, Sacred Heart’s sister hospital on the North Side. Holy Family Hospital managers have reduced staffing by 45 full-time equivalent positions through attrition, overtime reduction and reduced hours. The hospital’s goal is to reduce an additional 10 FTEs by the end of August.

Last month, competing hospital system Empire Health Services announced layoffs of more than 150 employees at Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center. That represented 8.6 percent of the hospitals’ staff.