MCH eliminates nine jobs to balance budget

SUPERIOR – In a meeting held on Thursday, January 9, the county commissioners heard an update on the status of the hospital’s budgetary changes.

Larry Putnam, interim chief executive officer of the Mineral Community Hospital presented the update. The hospital recently made a number of layoffs as part of budget saving changes to MCH operations.

Putnam did not address specific individuals, but talked about how the decisions were made on who to let go. When he arrived in the interim position, the board asked for a line-by-line analysis of the hospital’s operation to see where improvements could be made. In December, he presented a six-month budget to the board for how to improve the situation.

The case was not as bad as initially feared. The supervisors and managers were able to trim the budget to work around employees. Putnam said all efforts were made to avoid layoffs wherever possible.

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought,” said Putnam. “We did everything as efficiently as we could in that budget.”

However, numbers still did not balance out and layoffs were required. Nine people were laid off. Six of these positions were part-time and were eliminated. According to Putnam, great care was taken to avoid layoffs for anyone in patient care.

When Putnam contacted those people to be laid off, some of the talks went well. There was one teenage employee where they talked more about the Superior basketball team than the layoff. However, the announcement hit others harder.

“It really was very difficult to talk to these people, in the holiday season, about their jobs being eliminated,” said Putnam.

The layoffs have led to some issues with required positions. The holder of one position, which was eliminated was also the only person on the hospital’s staff with a license to operate the building’s boiler. To fill this void, two employees will be sent to a class at a community college to learn about boiler operation.

In the meeting, the community was assured no ill will or vendetta was present in any of the nine layoffs. The process was hard and described as a heart wrenching decision to make.

“It was simply a business decision because the numbers didn’t balance out,” said Putnam.

The layoffs were conducted based on seniority, where employees who had been there the longest kept their job. According to Putnam, this system was handled per union rules. He said rumors were understandable at a time like this and any concerns should be brought to him directly.

All of the layoffs will be permanent. According to Putnam, the hospital has come up with a better way to operate without the positions and they are no longer required. However, some of the employees who held eliminated positions will still be of use to the hospital.

“We were able to keep a couple folks on board because our funding was different than our operation,” said Putnam. “We already had cash coming in and we had vacancies in those positions.”

Another area where changes were made was the St. Regis clinic’s shut down. Duane Simons, commissioner of the west end, said every time he had gone in, it had been busy and was curious why it was closed. Putnam was unable to provide an answer for why this was done, as the clinic fell under Mineral Regional Health Center interim CEO Cindy Stergar’s territory.

However, Putnam did allude to some projects, which could make use of the building. Specifics of what these projects were did not get discussed and it was emphasized none of it was a done deal yet. More information on both CEO’s plans will be available in the near future.

Similar to when they first came to the county, Putnam and Stergar will go around the communities to hold town hall discussions. The CEO’s will update the communities on progress and listen to the thoughts of the residents. No specific date for these meetings has been determined.