Hospital lays off 100 workers, increases bennie premiums...and execs get 20-30% increase in pay

[rainbow4321]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012109dnmetparklandbonuses.993532ee.html

Top executives at Parkland Memorial Hospital collected about $1.7 million in bonuses at the end of last year, according to records released recently to The Dallas Morning News.

The bonuses ranged from $36,054 for the vice president who heads the hospital's community clinics to $143,325 for Parkland's chief financial officer.
(snip)
"We kind of stay away from the word 'bonus,' " she said. "It's really earned incentives. We have certain goals that we set forth as a board.

(snip)

The lengthy waits in Parkland's ER became an issue in September 2008, when a 58-year-old patient, Mike Herrera, collapsed and died after waiting 19 hours for care. A subsequent visit by The Joint Commission, a national accreditation group, cited Parkland for failing to meet 11 standards in its emergency room. Later, the hospital launched a plan to cut wait times and improve emergency care.
-------------------------

Problems with this:
1)The problems that the execs are credited with fixing..why did the problems HAPPEN on their watch to begin with??. We violated ELEVEN Joint Commission standards on THEIR WATCH.
The ER wait time issue was addressed ONLY after a high profile business owner died in the ER after a long, long wait and he was never looked at after his initial check in. And one other "goal reached" given as justification: less patients getting pneumonia. Um, yeah, the direct patient care staff got that carried out, not the 9-5 execs.

2) the decision by the hospital board to give these pay increases was "made in December". Right around the time that these same execs were giving pink slips to 100 lower rank/file employees, eliminating 100 other unfilled jobs, and INcreasing the benefit premiums for those who kept their jobs. They were also giving town hall lectures on how these decisions were the only way to keep the hospital afloat.

Notice the article only talks about how lower food chain workers got a 2-3% merit increase? Nothing about the layoffs or increase in bennie premiums (that cancel out that merit increase). BTW, the real merit increases were to be "averaging 2%" not a full 2 to 3%. Everyone I have talked to, they got about 50 to 60 cents/hour "raise", not even a full 2%

Yet the execs are getting up to 30%.


And we wonder why the health care system is all screwed up.

[jonathon]

1. This has been the real failure of the dems in health reform

If they could have explained the realities to the American people, in terms they could understand, they could have OWNED this legislation and the Congress and White House for decades to come.

[rainbow4321]

5. The workers are pissed as are the taxpayers

This is a county owned hospital that in Nov 2008 got approval from 80% of county voters to $upport a brand new hospital to be done in 5 years. Hospital officials had huge get out the vote pre-Nov 2008 saying how they could not build it without a bond approval from county residents.

That was Nov 2008..the decision to give execs 20-30% pay increase was made in Dec 2009 and not announced by the hospital AT ALL, this info was found when the newspaper requested the information (it is a county run hospital so the hospital had no choice but to cough up the information).

on edit: the begging for the bond approval was in Nov 2008 not 2009.

[dkf]

2. Makes you wonder what they get bonuses for.

Maybe every person who leaves the emergency room for another hospital gets them an extra 500

[rainbow4321]

11. I still can't believe that they are being given credit for "improving"

the wait time. They didn't implement shit until the patient died after a 19 hour wait.
They got 11 Joint Commission violations cited in addition to being charged with EMTALA violation from CMS (Medicare and Medicaid board) and camethisclose to losing all their Medicare and Medicaid funding. Joint Commission gave them one of the highest/worst penalties: we're coming back in less than 30 days and this better be fixed or you lose your accreditation.
Then there was the "surgery consents not being signed" violation that also had CMS on their asses.
Yet now one of the justifications for their increase in pay is that they "fixed" the wait time situation.
Oh, yeah, at their town hall meetings with employees they also justified laying off 100 people and increasing our bennie premiums by saying how badly the property taxes are doing in the county..less property taxes meant less money for the hospital so the facility had to tighten their $$ belts.
Funny, the property tax issue didn't seem to negatively effect THEIR paychecks.

[dkf]

3. Makes you wonder what they get bonuses for.

Maybe every person who leaves the emergency room for another hospital gets them an extra 500

[gratuitous]

12. Please - "earned incentives" not "bonuses"

And you can't make an earned incentive omelette without breaking a few eggs - or nurses. Ya know?

[rainbow4321]

21. In this case, one person's death/not leaving

Got them a total of close to 2 million dollars in "incentive pay" (when you add up each of their amounts).

[laughingliberal]

4. 2-3% 'merit raises' have been standard since the industry went for profit

and increased in premiums to suck up your raise is also the standare. And they wonder why they have a nursing shortage.

Really, they don't wonder. They drove nurses out as fast as they could after they took over the hospitals so they could plead, "shortage' and cut labor costs while nurses killed themselves trying to get it all done and patient care suffered.

[Wapsie B]

6. And if they can do it to nurses, a group with a fair amount of political clout in your

average hospital think of what they can do to departments like Respiratory Therapy or the Medical Lab? What gets me is hospitals paint themselves as innocent bystanders in this healthcare debate and that's simply not true. Articles like this prove that. An MBA in healthcare management has truly become an entitlement program.

[47of74]

7. That's obscene

Repiglicans have it all wrong. We need to regulate the piss out of everything, because if you give in an inch they take a million fucking miles.

[etherealtruth]

8. Sounds like the company I work for ...

Admittedly, not in health care .... same story different industry

[w8liftinglady]

9. as a former employee and current patient,I can vouch for the poor staffing

parkland is home to several centers of excellence-Burn Unit,Trauma,and the epilepsy unit(where I am a patient).The nurses are incredibly knowledgeable-probably the best of the best...and get the hell out of there as soon as they can because of the high acuity.Good luck,Parkland-I hope I have my neurosurgery before all your staff takes a walk.

[MadMaddie]

10. This is exactly why for Profit Hospitals are failing communities

[bertman]

13. Instead of complaining and whining about this crap, you need to start your own hospital

so you can change the system.

Do I really need a sarcasm thingy?

Rec.

[Vidar]

14. K&R.

[lpbk2713]

15. Sickening corporate greed.

Makes me want to :puke:

[tammywammy]

16. What's worse is since Parkland is a county hospital, soooo many people depend on it

Including the surrounding counties.

[jgraz]

17. This isn't our health care system. It's our economic system.

Until we get these greedy fucks out of power, this will happen in every corporation.

[progressoid]

18. "earned incentives"

Jebus :banghead:

[Greyhound]

19. I never wondered for a moment. The problem is obvious and the solution self-evident.

So why are so many willing to pretend that this is a difficult problem?

[rainbow4321]

22. The facility brass is saying that they are just doing what other healthcare places are doing

Said that they hired an outside company who researched other hospital exec pay increases and only did what 80% of US facilities did with THEIR exec pay.
Nice. So you turn to a broken $ystem and say "we only did what THEY did, so it's OK".
And the "incentive pay" was "only" .2% of the hospital's $500 million annual budget. Funny, the salaries of those layed off were probably alot less than that so called .2% but they were real quick to get rid of those workers so they could balance that same budget.

[TheWatcher]

20. Why not? At this point they know the jellyfish, Stockholm Syndrome public is just going to watch TV

and take it.

Look, everywhere in the country, there is just rampant looting, robbing, and stealing going on.

They keep pushing the sheep noses in their own shit, because they can. Stories like this are becoming so commonplace it is desensitizing to the point of feeling normal.

Of course it's despicable, but they will keep doing this until they are stopped.

Until they are MADE to stop.

One way or the other.

If I were these thieving little sycophants, I MIGHT start thinking about spending some of that Blood Money on security.

Because if the Sheep ever wake up and get pissed off, they MIGHT be looking for some payback.

[ileus]

23. Our CEO is trying to convince the board to sell our hospital....

so he can collect a finders fee and move on to his next hospital...