Possible UIHC layoffs

[Daserop]

Seems like this is hitting the local new now. From the article, "Administrators say their goal is to avoid layoffs and minimize the effect on employees. They say they are "considering alternative measures to defray some of the impact, which cannot be fully addressed with currently available state and federal funding."

My wife works for UIHC. What upper management communicated to the employees to make up for the UIHC's financial shortage was layoffs or to reduce "everyone's" salary by a undetermined percentage for an undetermined amount of time.

During the same town hall meeting it was brought up about postponing construction projects. They commented that they would look into that as well. Funny how an employee had to bring that up and it wasn't one of the UIHC main ways to save money.

Federal aid was also brought up and they commented that it "wasn't enough".

Just thought it was interesting they went straight to layoffs and reducing salaries. What about the terrible mismanagement of construction projects? Hell they still owe Modern Piping about 13.5 million.

https://kwwl.com/2020/05/19/layoffs-possible-as-uihc-assesses-pandemic-impact/

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/...dern-piping-withholds-brunt-of-award-20190425

 

[volclone]

Sorry to hear that--I'm sure this makes for uneasy moments in your house.

Kind of surprised it took them this long...our local hospital began furloughing people 4 weeks ago. Lack of elective surgery has proven to be an absolute killer for hospitals.

 

[4theCYcle]

Seems like this is hitting the local new now. From the article, "Administrators say their goal is to avoid layoffs and minimize the effect on employees. They say they are "considering alternative measures to defray some of the impact, which cannot be fully addressed with currently available state and federal funding."

My wife works for UIHC. What upper management communicated to the employees to make up for the UIHC's financial shortage was layoffs or to reduce "everyone's" salary by a undetermined percentage for an undetermined amount of time.

During the same town hall meeting it was brought up about postponing construction projects. They commented that they would look into that as well. Funny how an employee had to bring that up and it wasn't one of the UIHC main ways to save money.

Federal aid was also brought up and they commented that it "wasn't enough".

Just thought it was interesting they went straight to layoffs and reducing salaries. What about the terrible mismanagement of construction projects? Hell they still owe Modern Piping about 13.5 million.

https://kwwl.com/2020/05/19/layoffs-possible-as-uihc-assesses-pandemic-impact/

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/...dern-piping-withholds-brunt-of-award-20190425

That really does suck. Unfortunately many industries are going to have lasting effects from the drastic measures taken. But, I'll agree I've noticed upper management and businesses generally won't cut or budget in obvious areas, while cutting their best workers or highest paid is usually the avenue they choose to then replace with younger and cheaper labor.

What I've come to the conclusion/terms/realization over the years about hospital management, is most (not all) are kind of a joke. I can relate it to Mercy here in Des Moines. There are certain departments I'll leave anonymous, how they a lot of the times let the good nurses go because they've come up with the dumbest rules and policies possible driving them out. They generally are slow to do raises, but push so much work onto good nurses, while the incompetent ones seem to somehow slide by. The patient's care suffers because of it.

 

[volclone]

Another thing COVID has exposed...our healthcare system in this country is broken. Badly broken. Not due to the hard working folks on the front lines--but rather the administration and management of healthcare facilities...and the scandal that is health insurance.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Another thing COVID has exposed...our healthcare system in this country is broken. Badly broken. Not due to the hard working folks on the front lines--but rather the administration and management of healthcare facilities...and the scandal that is health insurance.

Actually, if anything here, I think COVID has showed at least one strength of the American system. We have so much duplication and overcapacity in our healthcare system (e.g., our ratio of ventilators to population compared to other peer countries), which under normal circumstances is additional cost but can turn into quite useful when you need something like that for peak load during a pandemic like we are having.

We thought we needed to "bend the curve" to "reduce the peak stress" on the system. It is turning out that, with a few regional exceptions, we are ending up with layoffs because of reduced load most places, not desperation for absolutely every body that we can find to throw at this thing in order to keep everything from falling apart.

We have not done appreciably better or worse than peer countries, at least. You might want to be careful to not shove your preexisting thoughts about the system into a novel situation that basically every developed country on Earth had its growing pains addressing. The few exceptions to that might be some countries in East Asia, but they at least had the experience of SARS and the like and appropriate plans in case it happened again.

North America and Europe are learning painfully on the fly.

 

[Doc]

Seems like this is hitting the local new now. From the article, "Administrators say their goal is to avoid layoffs and minimize the effect on employees. They say they are "considering alternative measures to defray some of the impact, which cannot be fully addressed with currently available state and federal funding."

My wife works for UIHC. What upper management communicated to the employees to make up for the UIHC's financial shortage was layoffs or to reduce "everyone's" salary by a undetermined percentage for an undetermined amount of time.

During the same town hall meeting it was brought up about postponing construction projects. They commented that they would look into that as well. Funny how an employee had to bring that up and it wasn't one of the UIHC main ways to save money.

Federal aid was also brought up and they commented that it "wasn't enough".

Just thought it was interesting they went straight to layoffs and reducing salaries. What about the terrible mismanagement of construction projects? Hell they still owe Modern Piping about 13.5 million.

https://kwwl.com/2020/05/19/layoffs-possible-as-uihc-assesses-pandemic-impact/

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/...dern-piping-withholds-brunt-of-award-20190425

I don't really see how whatever happened with that modern piping project really applies to layoffs/salary reductions due to the virus. If they are laying off people in lieu of postponing upcoming projects, that is one thing, but this one was already built, so there's not much more UIHC can do about it. I'm sorry about your situation, but tieing whatever happened between UIHC and Modern Piping to current layoffs/salary reductions due to the virus does not make much sense to me.

 

[wxman1]

I don't really see how whatever happened with that modern piping project really applies to layoffs/salary reductions due to the virus. If they are laying off people in lieu of postponing upcoming projects, that is one thing, but this one was already built, so there's not much more UIHC can do about it. I'm sorry about your situation, but tieing whatever happened between UIHC and Modern Piping to current layoffs/salary reductions due to the virus does not make much sense to me.

It documents the long history of financial mismanagement.

 

[ArgentCy]

Another thing COVID has exposed...our healthcare system in this country is broken. Badly broken. Not due to the hard working folks on the front lines--but rather the administration and management of healthcare facilities...and the scandal that is health insurance.

Umm, not just Healthcare. Just about everything has been badly broken. And for a long time. Things breakdown slowly with hardly anyone noticing, then all of the sudden something happens and people all see the results quite suddenly.

 

[ArgentCy]

Actually, if anything here, I think COVID has showed at least one strength of the American system. We have so much duplication and overcapacity in our healthcare system (e.g., our ratio of ventilators to population compared to other peer countries), which under normal circumstances is additional cost but can turn into quite useful when you need something like that for peak load during a pandemic like we are having.

We thought we needed to "bend the curve" to "reduce the peak stress" on the system. It is turning out that, with a few regional exceptions, we are ending up with layoffs because of reduced load most places, not desperation for absolutely every body that we can find to throw at this thing in order to keep everything from falling apart.

We have not done appreciably better or worse than peer countries, at least. You might want to be careful to not shove your preexisting thoughts about the system into a novel situation that basically every developed country on Earth had its growing pains addressing. The few exceptions to that might be some countries in East Asia, but they at least had the experience of SARS and the like and appropriate plans in case it happened again.

North America and Europe are learning painfully on the fly.

We don't need ventilators. We need hyperbaric chambers.

 

[Dandy]

What upper management communicated to the employees to make up for the UIHC's financial shortage was layoffs or to reduce "everyone's" salary by a undetermined percentage for an undetermined amount of time.

Once they take it, they won't give it back.

 

[LivntheCyLife]

Actually, if anything here, I think COVID has showed at least one strength of the American system. We have so much duplication and overcapacity in our healthcare system (e.g., our ratio of ventilators to population compared to other peer countries), which under normal circumstances is additional cost but can turn into quite useful when you need something like that for peak load during a pandemic like we are having.

We thought we needed to "bend the curve" to "reduce the peak stress" on the system. It is turning out that, with a few regional exceptions, we are ending up with layoffs because of reduced load most places, not desperation for absolutely every body that we can find to throw at this thing in order to keep everything from falling apart.

We have not done appreciably better or worse than peer countries, at least. You might want to be careful to not shove your preexisting thoughts about the system into a novel situation that basically every developed country on Earth had its growing pains addressing. The few exceptions to that might be some countries in East Asia, but they at least had the experience of SARS and the like and appropriate plans in case it happened again.

North America and Europe are learning painfully on the fly.

Totally agree. I'm biased but I still believe no place in the world has a system like ours when it comes to the advancing medicine and providing expert care, especially our academic medical centers. I know this borders on politics, but if we can get every citizen access to good health insurance and care and make health insurance portable for everyone so they are freed from being forced to certain insurance depending on their employer, I don't think a lot is needed in terms of changing our hospital network and health care providers.

 

[ISUTex]

That really does suck. Unfortunately many industries are going to have lasting effects from the drastic measures taken. But, I'll agree I've noticed upper management and businesses generally won't cut or budget in obvious areas, while cutting their best workers or highest paid is usually the avenue they choose to then replace with younger and cheaper labor.

What I've come to the conclusion/terms/realization over the years about hospital management, is most (not all) are kind of a joke. I can relate it to Mercy here in Des Moines. There are certain departments I'll leave anonymous, how they a lot of the times let the good nurses go because they've come up with the dumbest rules and policies possible driving them out. They generally are slow to do raises, but push so much work onto good nurses, while the incompetent ones seem to somehow slide by. The patient's care suffers because of it.

Just one of many reasons I won't go to Mercy.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Totally agree. I'm biased but I still believe no place in the world has a system like ours when it comes to the advancing medicine and providing expert care, especially our academic medical centers. I know this borders on politics, but if we can get every citizen access to good health insurance and care and make health insurance portable for everyone so they are freed from being forced to certain insurance depending on their employer, I don't think a lot is needed in terms of changing our hospital network and health care providers.

There is a cliché often repeated between healthcare wonks in DC.

You can design a healthcare system to do 2/3 of the following things --

Provide universal or near-universal access and coverage
Provide top-quality and cutting-edge care to patients
Be affordable to the point it does not collectively break everybody

Nobody has (or probably ever will, to be frank) gone 3/3.

Improving one invariably makes at least one of the others worse.

 

[LivntheCyLife]

Seems like this is hitting the local new now. From the article, "Administrators say their goal is to avoid layoffs and minimize the effect on employees. They say they are "considering alternative measures to defray some of the impact, which cannot be fully addressed with currently available state and federal funding."

My wife works for UIHC. What upper management communicated to the employees to make up for the UIHC's financial shortage was layoffs or to reduce "everyone's" salary by a undetermined percentage for an undetermined amount of time.

During the same town hall meeting it was brought up about postponing construction projects. They commented that they would look into that as well. Funny how an employee had to bring that up and it wasn't one of the UIHC main ways to save money.

Federal aid was also brought up and they commented that it "wasn't enough".

Just thought it was interesting they went straight to layoffs and reducing salaries. What about the terrible mismanagement of construction projects? Hell they still owe Modern Piping about 13.5 million.

https://kwwl.com/2020/05/19/layoffs-possible-as-uihc-assesses-pandemic-impact/

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/...dern-piping-withholds-brunt-of-award-20190425

Sorry to hear this. We're definitely seeing some previous mismanagement at certain places coming home to roost. Plus this is all really unprecedented. Then the complexity of state universities, state funding, and hospital funding makes adjustments almost impossible. Money doesn't flow easily from philanthropy, healthcare revenue, and taxpayer funds for building projects to hospital operations vice versa. There's lots of rules and laws in place to stop that from happening. And don't know the fiscal calendar at UIHC but if it's July-June, it's a mess with the rules in place about balancing the books by June 30.

Best wishes to your family.

 

[LivntheCyLife]

There is a cliché often repeated between healthcare wonks in DC.

You can design a healthcare system to do 2/3 of the following things --

Provide universal or near-universal access and coverage
Provide top-quality and cutting-edge care to patients
Be affordable to the point it does not collectively break everybody

Nobody has (or probably ever will, to be frank) gone 3/3.

Improving one invariably makes at least one of the others worse.

I agree to a degree. However, I still think more transparency and focusing on the patient/provider relationship to give them more power against insurance companies could come close to improving all three.

 

[Sigmapolis]

I agree to a degree. However, I still think more transparency and focusing on the patient/provider relationship to give them more power against insurance companies could come close to improving all three.

Ah, Odysseus wants to sail to the sirens...

 

[volclone]

Actually, if anything here, I think COVID has showed at least one strength of the American system. We have so much duplication and overcapacity in our healthcare system (e.g., our ratio of ventilators to population compared to other peer countries), which under normal circumstances is additional cost but can turn into quite useful when you need something like that for peak load during a pandemic like we are having.

We thought we needed to "bend the curve" to "reduce the peak stress" on the system. It is turning out that, with a few regional exceptions, we are ending up with layoffs because of reduced load most places, not desperation for absolutely every body that we can find to throw at this thing in order to keep everything from falling apart.

We have not done appreciably better or worse than peer countries, at least. You might want to be careful to not shove your preexisting thoughts about the system into a novel situation that basically every developed country on Earth had its growing pains addressing. The few exceptions to that might be some countries in East Asia, but they at least had the experience of SARS and the like and appropriate plans in case it happened again.

North America and Europe are learning painfully on the fly.

You might want to bring some facts to your argument before you start shoving around your emotions and beliefs--those are best left to Theologians and Philosophers. Here are the facts (yup, those pesky things):

Fact #1: In a 2019 Study of Western Developed Peer Countries done by The Commonwealth Fund, the US is #1 in spending on healthcare as a % of GDP ("USA! USA! USA!), BUT last in outcomes. This just one of many studies that have said basically the same thing for years. But heck, why fix something that's so affordable and works so well!
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pu...20/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019

Fact #2: Just Google "Heathcare workers laid off." Pick any article you want from any source--they all will say the same thing: Hospitals have taken a huge financial hit because elective procedures/surgeries have been basically prohibited for the last 6-8 weeks. Only now are they being allowed in most states.

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

 

[volclone]

There is a cliché often repeated between healthcare wonks in DC.

You can design a healthcare system to do 2/3 of the following things --

Provide universal or near-universal access and coverage
Provide top-quality and cutting-edge care to patients
Be affordable to the point it does not collectively break everybody

Nobody has (or probably ever will, to be frank) gone 3/3.

Improving one invariably makes at least one of the others worse.

There's a ton of hard data that disagrees with your 3/3 theory and the notion that improving one invariably makes at least one of the others worse. The link is exhibit A.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pu...20/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019

Despite conspiracy theories, access/affordability/and high quality are not mutually exclusive. I can speak personally about the healthcare system in Germany--it runs circles around ours on the three criteria you mentioned.

 

[IcSyU]

UIHC has been able to hold off for this long? Mayo announced cuts, furloughs, etc. 6 weeks ago. Basically everyone salaried took at minimum a 7% haircut and higher salaried people saw 15%. Mayo was tapping their reserves for a cool billion as well.

Construction projects can be tough to postpone. A lot of then come with "spend it or lose it" funding provisions. Certainly there's maintenance that can be deferred but bigger projects it can be tough once everything is lined up.

 

[qwerty]

There is a cliché often repeated between healthcare wonks in DC.

You can design a healthcare system to do 2/3 of the following things --

Provide universal or near-universal access and coverage
Provide top-quality and cutting-edge care to patients
Be affordable to the point it does not collectively break everybody

Nobody has (or probably ever will, to be frank) gone 3/3.

Improving one invariably makes at least one of the others worse.

Ah yes, the old CHEAP, QUICK, GOOD. Choose any two.
You can get cheap and quick but it won't be good.
You can get quick and good, but it won't be cheap.
You can get cheap and good, but it won't be quick.