Jacksonville Memorial Hospital will be laying off an undetermined amount of workers due to a system-wide realignment.
Multiple anonymous sources have confirmed across the last two days that layoffs began taking place at the hospital yesterday.
In a statement released by Memorial Health this afternoon, the hospital says that they are restructuring to reduce its workforce, focusing primarily on leadership, administrative and support positions. The announcement did not provide a specific number of workers that the restructuring is affecting, saying only that “several hundred colleagues are affected, including 20 percent of leadership positions across the organization. This reduction represents 5 percent of Memorial Health’s total salary and benefits.”
According to an anonymous source speaking to WLDS, the Memorial Health system has been struggling to receive several millions of dollars in reimbursement from ongoing long waits for payments from Medicaid and Medicare coupled with inflationary costs on medical supplies. Locations in Springfield, Taylorville, Lincoln, and Decatur are also seeing layoffs as a result of the realignment and losses.
The official statement goes on to say that those being laid off are receiving “a severance package, a health insurance stipend, support resources, [and] some individuals may also be offered the opportunity to transfer to different roles within the organization.”
Ed Curtis, Memorial Health president and CEO said in the release: “This is a difficult decision that was made after careful analysis and implementation of other cost-saving measures. Memorial Health is not immune to national trends, such rising cost of supplies and equipment, high cost of temporary labor, and shifting trends in payer reimbursements. We are committed to continuing to provide the highest quality of care for the communities we serve, and this action, while painful, enables us to focus on our core mission.”
One of the casualties of the realignment will be JMH’s award-winning Transitional Care Unit. U.S. News & World Report rated the TCU at JMH one of the top 5% short-term rehab facilities in the country earlier this year. The 15-bed facility will cease taking patients on September 30th, according to today’s statement. All patients currently in the TCU will remain there until they are able to be safely discharged, with no disruption to their ongoing care, according to officials. Colleagues in the TCU at JMH are said to be offered the opportunity to apply for other clinical roles within Memorial Health.
The official statement went on to say that the decision to close the TCU was based on “our need to focus resources on our core mission, particularly services that are not available elsewhere in Morgan County. The Jacksonville community has multiple resources offering similar types of transitional healthcare services, and JMH will continue to assist patients and families in finding appropriate post-discharge care.”
The anonymous sources placed the number of employees affected by these changes across the entire system around 500.
Memorial Health System permanently cut 143 jobs across its 5 hospitals in 2020.