Oswego County Business Magazine

Friday January 9, 2009

Layoffs Strike Lee Memorial During Uncertain Times

Mayor: Expect more job loss when emergency services close

By Lou Sorendo

Fulton Mayor Ronald Woodward said the layoff of 36 workers at A.L. Lee Memorial Hospital in Fulton is just a taste of things to come.

Lee Memorial will lay off 36 employees by Sunday. Executive director of the hospital, Dennis Casey, cited a decrease in the facility’s inpatient volume as the reason for the layoffs, according to published reports.

For the past two months, the hospital has seen fewer patients than in previous months, hospital officials claim.

Employees from all areas of the hospital were reportedly included in the layoffs as to not disproportionately affect any department. Lee Memorial is still open and offering services to the greater Fulton area.

Woodward said he heard rumors about an impending layoff at Lee Memorial, but during a recent conversation with Casey, received no indication that it was coming.

“I was very disturbed by that,” he said. “Times are hard.”

Woodward said the layoffs will have an adverse effect on the economy. “We’re concerned about the people laid off and how they are going to make it,” he commented.

Woodward said the area is going to have to brace itself once again when Lee Memorial converts to a diagnostic and treatment center. The change will eventually eliminate half of the hospital's 400 jobs.

“Health care in the Fulton area will be compromised by the lost jobs, and when the hospital is closed to emergency care, it will be compromised even further,” Woodward added.

The turning point

The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, better known as the Berger Commission, was created to streamline the state’s health care industry that was wracked by out-of-control costs and Medicaid abuse.

The commission cited the need to eliminate excess hospital and nursing home bed capacity, eliminate hospital duplication of services, modernize outdated health care facilities, and provide New Yorkers with greater access to primary and preventive care.

In 2007, the Berger Commission recommended that Lee Memorial close its 67 beds and shut down its emergency room to become an outpatient diagnostic treatment center.

Since then, the hospital was given a year extension to find another health care facility to merge with. Talks of a merger with Oswego Health have ceased in the past year.

Even as the state Department of Health recently accepted Lee Memorial’s closure plan, the hospital continues talks of a merger with two Syracuse hospitals.

The state Department of Health has amended Lee’s operating certificate to end emergency services by June 30 to allow for an orderly transition to clinic services only.

While the cuts were not the result of recommendations by the Berger Commission, Woodward took aim at what he felt was a fatally flawed process.

Blasts Berger Commission

“I understand the reasoning behind it, but don’t think they looked closely enough at individual communities,” Woodward said.

“Over the last 30 years in Fulton, we have deliberately built several senior citizen complexes. Those residents really need those services.”

Woodward said it was “cold and callous” to allow the Berger Commission to make an unchallenged decision regarding hospital shutdowns. He said elected state representatives were left out of the loop when it came to the decision-making process.

“That’s a smack in the face of democracy,” he said. “That’s not what government is all about.”

Woodward said Fulton’s aging population will increase demand for health care services.

“If Oswego Hospital is not ready for the influx of patients from the Fulton area, these seniors are going to have to be transported to another county. I hope they have room for them.”

Meanwhile, relatives of patients will have to brave winter weather traveling conditions in order to travel long distances to be with their hospitalized loved ones.

Woodward said overzealous efforts to save Medicaid dollars “has gotten off the path of what health care is all about.”

“We need to revamp the healthcare system and stop letting profiteers prosper,” he said.

Meanwhile, morale at Lee Memorial has sunk to all-time lows. Woodward likened the low morale to what was present at Nestle Co. when it shut down in 2003.

Woodward also noted that Fulton still has a considerable population of workers engaged in manufacturing. “If someone in one of those factories gets hurt, I think they have lower chances” or receiving adequate health care, he said.