St. Joseph Healthcare in Bangor is planning various cost-cutting measures, including executive salary cuts, in order to prevent laying off staff.
The measures, announced yesterday during a staff meeting at St. Joseph Hospital, will affect the organization’s 800 employees and are expected to save the organization $250,000 a month, according to the Bangor Daily News. Slated to take effect June 1 and last until the end of the year, the changes include:
- Cutting executive salaries by 5% for three months
- Eliminating employer match for workers’ retirement funds
- Eliminating tuition reimbursements
- Eliminating student loan repayment benefits for new employees
- Eliminating bonuses for nurses performing work outside their usual assignments
- Eliminating incentives for per diem nurses to work a certain number of hours
- Reducing funds available to continuing education for physicians
- Reducing overtime by all hourly employees
- Requiring full-time hourly employees to take one furlough day a month for three months, with part-time workers required to take pro-rated unpaid time
Sister Mary Norberta, president CEO of St. Joseph, which is an affiliate of Massachusetts-based Covenant Health Systems, attributed the changes to declining revenues and the poor economy. People are postponing appointments and elective procedures, while the cost of free or low-cost care the hospital must provide and debt owed to it is rising, according to the paper. Despite the cost-cutting measures, Norberta said the possibility of layoffs could not be ruled out.
Go to the article from the Bangor Daily News >>Â