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County Hospital layoffs ignite fears of public health care future
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Stroger Hospital, on the city's west side, will lose 107 employees and will bear the load of continued cuts to other areas of the Cook County health care system.
Hundreds of layoffs in the Cook County Hospital system have sparked anger from hospital workers, union leaders and health care activists as 335 employees were given pink slips last month with further plans to cut more jobs and vacant positions after the new year.
In a demonstration outside John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital on the city’s west side, protesters called for a cessation to the layoffs and cited the reduction in both medical and non-medical staff positions as a danger to public health.
The Cook County Health and Hospital Systems (HHS) linked the cuts to a previously announced plan to slash $60 million from its budget. The HHS, which was created by the Cook County Board of Commissioners to be an independent overseer of public medical system, mandated the layoffs as part of a “staff rebalancing” and was based on a report by Chicago-based Navigant Consulting, which was paid $1.7 million to recommend to the board of directors at the HHS that the hospital system was overstaffed.
The first round of layoffs is expected on a Jan. 12.
Stroger Hospital is slated lose 107 employees while Provident Hospital on the south side will cut 34 positions. South suburban Oak Forest Hospital will see 195 positions eliminated, ranging from food service workers to nurses.
Also proposed with the layoffs are the elimination of inpatient care at both Provident and Oak Forest, straining an already taxed public health system the serves an 80 percent poor, black, Latino and immigrant population.
“If you cancel all inpatient services at two of three of the county hospitals where are those people going to go?” asked Christine Boardman, President of SEIU Local 73, the union that represents the laid-off workers. “If they’re entirely uninsured, neither South Suburban nor Christ Hospital nor St. James will be able to take them and there just aren’t enough beds at Stroger.”
The HHS maintains that patient care will not be affected by the layoffs, although many remain skeptical by that assertion as these hospitals are already straining with the burden of the county’s poor, uninsured and under-insured.
“If there’s no place for these people to get health care, what are they going to do,” Boardman said. “People with diabetes, hypertension, the next thing that follows is a heart attack or stroke and when it goes untreated, the problem is that Stroger doesn’t have enough capacity.”
Medical professionals employed by the county were also taken aback by the announcement.
“The doctors weren’t consulted when they did this Navigate Report, they didn’t talk to the people who were doing the patient care,” said Emilie N. Junge, Regional Coordinator of the SEIU Doctors Council.
“They may have talked to the directors, they may have talked to some of the administrative people, but they didn’t talk to the doctors and the doctors are really, really worried about what happens when they cut services like they’re proposing right now."
However, some see the staff reductions in the Cook County health care system as long overdue. The Tribune applauded the layoffs as a great accomplishment for the independent HHS to bust up the “patronage paradise” that is the county health system.
“Cook County doesn't need and cannot afford three public hospitals, none of which is fully utilized,” continued the Tribune, which clearly saw the layoffs more as an opportunity to attack Democratic politicians than to be concerned with the plight of the poor and uninsured
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