Clarion Hospital President Steven Davis on Tuesday said about “a dozen” positions at the hospital are affected by the systemwide layoffs that had been announced by Butler Health System.
“The 67 (systemwide) positions were a combination of some positions that won’t be filled as well as the closing of our transitional care unit,” Davis said. “There were some individuals both here and in Butler Memorial Hospital.
“We had about a dozen folks who were directly impacted. Anything else here is just a matter of attrition or not filling a position. As with anything we do here, we try to do with a minimal impact on individuals. We work very, very hard to make sure that was the case.”
“We had a loss in revenue across the system of $30 to $45 million,” Davis said. “This recovery is going to take years in the industry.”
There was money that came into the system in the way of relief funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. However, Davis said, it did not cover all of the financial losses.
“A lot of our losses really were in revenues,” he said. “We effectively closed off our services and shut off our revenue while we were incurring great costs in for what was anticipated to be a surge.
“While we did not see the surge that they saw in some of the pockets in the more metropolitan areas, we still effectively lost tens of millions in revenue by doing the right thing. We cut out elective surgeries and, for Clarion Hospital, those elective procedures and surgeries make up almost 70 percent of our revenue.
“As we begin to emerge from this pandemic, we are planning for long-term sustainability and success. There is a lot of effort going on in the area of strategic planning.”
He said things are operating at “100 percent,” but many restrictions remain.
“The question is how quickly are the patients going to return. There is some trepidation among the patients. For some people, the last place they may want to go is to health care. We just don’t know how quickly things will return.”
A return, Davis said, would involve both short- and long-range planning.
“You don’t recover overnight from this kind of an impact,” he said.