Hospitals such as Stanford shut down elective surgeries “under a state [of California] mandate to prepare for a surge of COVID-19 patients, but on Wednesday [4/22/20] Gov. Gavin Newsom relaxed some of those restrictions, allowing for procedures such as heart-valve replacements, tumor removals and colonoscopies.”
4/24/2020, “Stanford Health Care to cut workers’ wages by 20%,” Palo Alto Weekly, Sue Dremann
“Hospital claims cuts are necessary due to COVID-19 economic impact,”
“Stanford Health Care is reducing its employees’ pay by 20% starting April 27, [2020] leaving many workers stunned by the announcement.
Employees of Stanford Health Care, including doctors, nurses and technicians who are caring for COVID-19 patients, will have their pay reduced by up to 20% starting Monday, April 27, for 10 weeks, according to a tip sheet the organization sent to workers on April 21.
The medical center briefly stated it was making the cuts due to the economic impacts of COVID-19 on the organization instead of laying off employees. The “temporary workforce adjustment” program was created as part of the hospital’s “cost-saving measure and initiatives,” hospital administrators stated. The pay reductions will apply to all employees at Stanford Hospital, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and, in the East Bay, Stanford-ValleyCare. Asked if the cuts included to doctors’ salaries, hospital spokeswoman Lisa Kim reiterated the cuts are “across the board.”
The employees can choose to lose pay but continue to work
full-time, or work fewer hours while taking paid time off in full-day
increments, or work fewer hours but take up to 96 hours of flex
time as time off. If they are not eligible, they can take unpaid time
off. The hospital will offer tips on how to file for unemployment
insurance.
Employees were stunned by the announcement. The pay cuts will be an economic burden for many employees, said Linda Cornell, a 40-year employee and
unit secretary who works at a nursing station as a sort of “air traffic
controller” for the unit. There’s also concern it could affect patient
care, she added.
“It’s just crazy. The governor was saying that we had the highest death rate (of COVID-19 patients) yesterday, and here they want to cut staff. I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.
CEO David Entwistle has indicated in earlier news reports that emergency room visits at Stanford Hospital is down 40%, hospital spokeswoman Lisa Kim said.
In a statement, Stanford said in part: “Stanford Health Care is
navigating the unprecedented economic impact of COVID-19 and, as part of
this effort, is implementing a temporary reduction in hours across the organization. The current pandemic has affected many organizations globally, and we are no exception. This is a difficult but necessary decision to sustain the long-term health of the organization so we can continue to provide critical services to the community.”
In another statement issued Monday, April 27, the medical center said the workforce adjustment is limited to the 10-week time period.
“Current reduced volumes (of patients) make it possible to implement this program at present. We anticipate that when the current shelter-in-place order is lifted, our patient volumes will return.…
Hospitals such as Stanford shut down elective surgeries, a large source of revenue, under a state [of California] mandate to prepare for a surge of COVID-19 patients, but on Wednesday Gov. Gavin Newsom relaxed some of those restrictions,
allowing for procedures such as heart-valve replacements, tumor removals and colonoscopies.…
In the meantime, many employees will face economic hardship.
Many have already taken or used up paid time off to care for their children because schools and day care centers have closed.
Although workers can use up to 120 hours of additional paid time off,
they would have to pay that money back or take time off without pay,
she said.
“Some families will never be able to accrue enough money to pay that back,” she said, with many employees earning $50,000 or less….
The hospital still has to keep things running, she said. She fears
that patients will receive a lower quality of care with fewer staff on
duty because they can’t get to a lot of things….
In its statement, Stanford Health Care refuted the notion that the cuts would impact care.
“This measure will not impact any of our operations. We
continue to provide the safest, highest quality care for our patients
and remain dedicated to pioneering research and effective clinical
therapies to address this evolving situation…” the hospital
administration stated.
Steve Trossman, a spokesman for the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers,
which represents many Stanford employees, said hospital administrators
notified the union of the plan less than a week before the announcement
but refused to negotiate.
Addressing Stanford’s employee-labor relations executives in an open letter, 16 employees — including unit secretaries, nursing assistants, technicians and others — said that they are dismayed by the hospital’s actions.
“Stanford Health Care is now turning its back on front-line health care workers and refusing to acknowledge our input when it comes to furloughs. Your refusal to work collaboratively and negotiate is extremely disrespectful to all of us who have been coming to work every day, often without proper protection, putting our lives at risk to care for patients,” they wrote.
“You’ve presented your furlough plan as a ‘shared sacrifice‘ as
if this extreme measure has the same impact on the CEO who makes over
$3 million/year and a housekeeper or a nursing assistant who struggle to
pay rent and feed our family in the Silicon Valley on $60,000 or
$70,000 a year. This shows a stark lack of empathy and understanding for
the reality of our lives.”
The letter asks the hospital to reconsider. The employees propose the hospital tier its approach to cutting costs by exempting the lowest paid workers and reducing the burden on employees earning less than $100,000 a year.
Among other requests,
they also ask the hospital to ensure that no workers lose or pay more
for health benefits. They also ask the hospital to explain the reasoning
behind the furloughs, including how much money the hospitals are
actually losing as a result of COVID-19 and how much Stanford Health Care will receive in federal stimulus funds included in the CARES Act and its recent supplement.
In its April 27 statement, Stanford said union-represented employees will also participate in the temporary workforce adjustment in accordance with the terms and conditions of their collective-bargaining agreements.
“At present, over 99% of all our employees have chosen to use the paid time off option,” Stanford said.”
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14 among comments
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“Gwen
Greene Middle School
on Apr 25, 2020 at 12:22 pm
People in Palo Alto need to wake up to what is going on in the rest of the country!! Hospitals everywhere are laying off staff and cutting salaries dramatically! From full layoffs to cutting hours and salaries for ALL EES– including doctors – by 30-50%. Other employers are cutting staff and for the EES who are still working, but at home, are taking 20-30% cuts in pay.”
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“Dan
Professorville
on Apr 25, 2020 at 9:57 am
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“JR
As of last report, Stanford was sitting on a $27.7 billion endowment
(maybe this has dropped a bit recently due to stock market declines).
So here we have a “non-profit educational organization” with a $27.7
billion endowment that is nickle and diming healthcare workers.”
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“Something is not right
another community
on Apr 24, 2020 at 11:16 pm
This is wrong. I think we overdid it with closing too many things down as a result of covid-19, including health care procedures and appointments. This
does not make sense. How did this happen? And why are they cutting pay?
Isn’t there some other possible solution? This is going to be a huge
cost to everyone, including patients.”
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“Local Healthcare Worker
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Apr 24, 2020 at 11:13 pm
Employees at Stanford Children’s Hospital are being instructed to reduce their hours by 40%. Some departments, like mine, were not significantly impacted by the virus and are still caring for the same number of patients. I don’t understand how these measures would “not impact any of our operations”.
How can we “continue to provide the safest, highest quality care for
our patients” when some departments are now understaffed due to these
across-the-board cuts?”
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I am a regular Stanford patient in several different departments (some of which are not seeing patients right now). No staff should be furloughed or have pay cut. This is so crappy! Many of these people live pay check to pay check.”
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“Thomas, pediatrics
Mountain View
on Apr 27, 2020 at 9:01 am
The governor should not get to say what procedures can and can’t be done. If we’re safe and have no issues with service, stay out of it.”
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“Concerned
The article posted here has some correct information but there are departments in the hospital that have been working on a 20% reduction for the last six weeks already and now are going to a 40% reduction with forced PTO to be taken.
With no chance of making up hours any other way. These are workers on
the front lines caring for our patients and their families.”
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“chris
University South
on Apr 25, 2020 at 11:40 pm
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“Witheld
Midtown
on Apr 26, 2020 at 1:37 pm
I went to the ER twice in the last month for an acute non-C19
problem that ended up needing an overnight stay and a surgical
procedure to correct….
They are fully staffed, fully equipped
and have well thought out and effective C19 controls in place.
(dedicated hot zone for C19 patients, everyone gets a mask even outsize.
Everyone admitted gets a C19 test — with results in 45 minutes for
screening, etc. etc.)...It is night and day difference from the scenes of horror we are getting from the east coast….
But they are, in fact, lacking in patients. All elective/non-urgent procedures are getting postponed. Even a lot of urgent situations are being (sometimes tragically) postponed by patients due to fear of C19. I know because I was one of them….
I had laproscopic surgery at 9am and was discharged at 2pm the same day. But if I had waited much longer,
it could have very easily become life or death serious….If you have a
small problem and really aren’t sure if you should wait or go in, call
or text your GP and ask!”…
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“Iron Man 2
Midtown
on Apr 26, 2020 at 8:46 am
Everyone should take their comments to twitter in response to this article. This is an echo chamber and has very little impact.
It is unacceptable that Stanford Healthcare would be applauding
healthcare workers and at the same time cutting salaries by 20% and
likely that cuts will get worse. Weblink to the report on Twitter is
below Web Link.”
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“Not the University
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Apr 27, 2020 at 12:43 pm
Some comments reference the University’s endowment, but Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s (Packard) are NOT part of the University and don’t have access to those funds.”…
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Added: California Gov. Newsom eases ban, says hospitals can now do “heart-valve replacements, angioplasty, tumor removal and colonoscopies”:
4/22/21, “In hopeful sign, state rolls back ban on some elective surgeries,” Palo Alto Weekly, Sue Dremann
“Newsom announces that hundreds of thousands of swabs are on their way, to aid in [PCR] coronavirus testing.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom took the first step in rolling back some restrictions on his stay-at-home order on Wednesday by announcing that hospitals could now start doing some elective surgeries. He cautioned, though, that the small step is just that: one piece in a series that will unfold only as health authorities feel they have made progress on controlling the spread of the COVID-19 disease.
Elective surgeries such as heart-valve replacements, angioplasty, removing tumors and performing colonoscopies, which were deferred as the state’s health care delivery systems prepared for a surge of COVID-19 patients,
may proceed. The restrictions are being eased based on progress the
state has made toward preparing hospitals to handle COVID-19 patients,
he said.
As painful as continuing the shutdown is socially, economically and emotionally, state leaders warned they will not push the boundaries before the number of COVID-19 patients shrinks. The state will also need adequate safeguards in place: higher levels of testing, tracking of patients, and personal protective equipment such as masks. All currently remain in short supply, Newsom said.
“Normalcy needs to be guided on slowing the spread. We’ve
tried to make that clear. There is no light switch, no date….We are not
prepared to reopen large sectors of the community,” he said.
Testing is the most important factor in getting the state to reopen, he said. The state can’t consider lifting its stay-at-home order until it has completed much more testing and contact tracing. The latter follows up with whoever has been in contact with a COVID-19 patient and those people are tested, he said.
After weeks of lagging testing, the state received some good news. It will now receive hundreds of thousands of swabs, which will allow testing for the coronavirus on a much larger scale, a prerequisite to any normalizing of the economy and society, he said.
Newsom said he spoke with President Donald Trump at around 11 a.m. Wednesday. Trump said the state will receive 100,000 swabs this week, 250,000 by next week
and a “substantial increase” by the third week. Each swab represents
another person who can be tested, Newsom added. With an abundance of
swabs, the state could test up to 400,000 to 500,000 people weekly….
Ultimately, the state hopes to test 80,000 people each day using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which detects the presence of the virus in nasal and throat sputum.
The testing has been mired in shortages of components for taking and preserving the samples, the latest being the swabs. At each step, public health staff have had to resolve missing or deficient quantities of reagent,
viral transport media for fixing the samples in test tubes and other
supplies, he said. While those bottlenecks continue, in some areas it is
improving, he said. A dearth of swabs has been the latest hiccup, however.
The governor could not say if the troublesome supply chain would be permanently fixed. The state can only conduct more tests if the availability of the supplies doesn’t slip backward….
Newsom said public health leaders are therefore looking at building “an army of tracers,” as many as 10,000 people [to be paid for by US taxpayers],
who will help with tracing and tracking people who have had the disease
[does this include people who’ve merely “tested positive” by PCR test?]
and the people with whom they have been in contact. The state also is working with Google and Apple to develop smartphone apps for symptom tracking to aid in contact-tracing efforts.
Public health administrators will develop protocols for how to isolate and quarantine those who are still actively infectious.
In addition to the swab tests, the state has the capacity to perform 1.5 million serological, or blood, tests, which identify antibodies for the virus.
These tests help health officers to understand the prevalence of the
disease across California and where they might focus efforts to corral
the disease. It’s still not clear whether the antibodies neutralize the disease and give a person immunity or if patients could become reinfected and pass on the disease to others, Ghaly said.
He reiterated Newsom’s call for a phased-in approach to reopening the state based on data and the availability of protective gear.
“It’s not a switch; it’s a dimmer,” he said. “We need significant amounts (of protective equipment and testing) before we can move forward on any plans.”
The state also is focusing on creating “hubs” for testing, such as in skilled-nursing facilities and communities of color. The state is advancing an egalitarian response to the virus by opening 86 testing sites in rural areas and communities of color — so-called “testing deserts,” Newsom said.
Cody, said that testing has been “like a crazy quilt,” with a
shifting pattern of multiple factors contributing to the problem. On the
local level, besides the dearth of kits, she’s been bombarded by everyone offering the next test and the next new test.
The county also is dependent on state and federal resources, with many moving parts.
“The challenge as of today is that some labs have excess capacity (to do testing) and there are places where there’s an unmet need,” she said, echoing a goal Newsom also outlined in his briefing.
“We have to figure out how to match those two things up,” she said.”
Downtown North
on Apr 25, 2020 at 2:41 pm