KHQ Right Now - News and Weather for Spokane and North Idaho | Deaconess cutting approximately 90 positions

Deaconess cutting approximately 90 positions

SPOKANE, Wash. - Tuesday, as part of a plan to address economic pressures, Deaconess Medical Center announced 90 positions will be cut out of a workforce of more than 1,800 employees. Approximately 85 percent of the affected positions are non-clinical.

These job eliminations are spread across the organization and are based on the needs of the hospital and its patients.  The majority of these positions are non-clinical support positions.  Affected employees will be provided with severance packages as provided by policy or negotiated contracts based on years of service and additional resources to help them identify new job opportunities and to apply for unemployment benefits and the continuation of health insurance.

The strategic initiative announced Tuesday is designed to address these economic pressures and position Deaconess for future success.  Major components of this plan include:

• Capital investments of over $10 million for new medical equipment and advanced technology to enhance the quality of care provided for patients, which is over and above approximately $10 million spent following the acquisition of the hospital during the last quarter in 2008.
  
• Physician recruitment efforts to bring much needed medical specialists to our community;
  
• Enhancement of key services, including emergency medicine, cardiology, cancer care and women's services;
  
• Expense control in areas unrelated to direct patient care, including marketing, travel, some supply costs and other administrative expenditures;
  
• Increasing productivity and overall efficiency through improved staff assignments.

"Any decision that affects jobs is extremely difficult. We have worked to minimize the number of people affected and to ensure that these changes will not impact the quality of care that the hospital provides.  We eliminated as many positions as possible through attrition and we reassigned employees to other open positions whenever we could," said Tim Hingtgen, interim chief executive officer of Deaconess Medical Center.