Beaumont Hospitals to lay off 2,475, cut 450 positions
So after the CEO effectively shuttered the Wayne site last week, and it was obvious they were hemorhagging cash, I feared this was coming.
My sister is currently awaiting word on her status, but more broadly speaking this is a bad, bad sign.
That this is happening even in a hotspot is alarming.
There is going to be a lively and animated debate about the role and practice of hospitals in months or years when things have calmed down and these hospitals start asking for bailouts.
Tele medicine has really taken off out of necessity so it may be an offshoot of that. I don't know.
Surgeries being put on hold has really slowed down the cash flow for just about every hospital. The majority of cash for any major health system comes through the surgical suite.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
^This. Acute care and ICU care don't make hospitals a dime in most cases. Most hospitals are reimbursed around 90 cents to the dollar or less during the average acute care stay, which tends to be 2-3 days.
Covid patients are being seen and treated in hospitals and ICUs for weeks, thus the amount of resources to treat them is significantly higher.
Most hospitals make money on outpatient care, procedures, and surgery, all of which have been drastically cut down or eliminated.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:26 AM ^
I processed claims in the early 2000s. I was always amazed how a 30 day stay in a normal room would pay about $100K case rate. It was more in an ICU. I don't know what the true cost is per month. I just know what they were paid. That was 15 years ago. They can make $100K on one surgery. My wife had surgery thankfully a couple of weeks before this all started.
My wife had surgery thankfully a couple of weeks before this all started.
Same. My wife had surgery the first week of March and is still on short term disability*. In that sense, the timing of her surgery could not have been better.
She is also a nurse at a children's hospital on the surgery/transplant floor and was told to take her time coming back and to just stay on disability. They're calling people off because they're so slow and have even furloughed some non-medical/clinical staff. While there are still critical transplant patients, the non-critical and elective cases are just staying home.
*She was actually supposed to go back to work a few weeks ago, but her surgeon had to delay the follow-up b/c someone in his office was exposed to coronavirus. The rescheduled appointment was pushed back again b/c now his wife has COVID-19 symptoms. He'll be back in May - hopefully.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
Double post....
April 21st, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
Edit: and the rare triple post, just so you all know how serious I am. Ugh, I need some caffeine.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Only procedures are Covid. Everyone else has been told to say home. Henry Ford, Ascension etc. will be next..Most hospitals have plenty of General Medicine rooms open and zero ER traffic.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:39 AM ^
Beaumont has a very high orthopedic volume, so it makes sense.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:50 AM ^
This. It's even hitting Michigan Medicine. One of the primary focuses of leadership at this point is looking at what procedures can be resumed and when.
April 21st, 2020 at 12:30 PM ^
And the Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head. This, however, was an easily foreseeable result of the willy-nilly shutdown of our economy, and is going to be one of the sources of the costs of the shutdowns. Many of the "elective" procedures that did not need to be performed were highly beneficial to the recipient, and the delay significantly injurious.
Fundamentally, letting the government decide what is essential will never work out well for the public and we are seeing the results.
Kind of reminds of a story out of LA when the workers at the county hospital system went on strike, and the running joke was that the death rate in the county dropped while the strike was on. It was funny, until you started looking at what the death rate and surgical results looked like in the months immediately after the strike. Lots of deaths that would not have happened and surgical outcomes not nearly as beneficial if done on schedule. I predict that we are going to see a very similar outcome here.
So once again we are trading using draconian steps to save XX thousands of people (most of whom have co-morbidity issues) at the cost of YY thousands of lives and the economic devastation of the lives of millions. Yep, makes sense to me
April 21st, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
Stop it. Only COVID lives matter!!
I started working at a midsized hospital system a few years ago (It was my second time working in healthcare). During my onboarding, it was said that every day, a 747 full of people died because of mistakes made by doctors. The premise was obviously about eliminating errors, but that said, if you knew that every day, an airplane would drop out of the sky, would you get on a plane? Would you view air travel as such an easy mode of transportation?
And knowing that approximately 150 people die everyday in car crashes, how could you possibly get in your car and go to work everyday. That is a sophist argument at best.
As someone else mentioned their daughter had screws in her leg to fix a problem that needed to be addressed. That is a great illustration on a problem that could be minor right now, but if allowed to fester for a couple months could cause debilitating problems
"Draconian" measures were needed because so-called adults follow the rules just like a toddler does; they do not apply to them.
Hospitals had already postponed all non-essential surgeries, etc., before Michigan ordered their postponement like a week later.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. Much like 2008-2009, companies will use COVID-19 as a cover to cut staff
When I see people being furloughed, I wonder how many of those people will have jobs to return to in a few months. It feels like the slow, graceful way to fire someone.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
I was the GM of a movie theatre during the 08' crisis and am now the GM of a commercial gym during all of this. One thing I've learned is that during bad times, the term furloughed essentially just means extending the permanent lay off process. I'm trying to convince higher ups not to but if the stay home extends to June I'm afraid they won't have a choice. Although who even knows how many of my employees will willingly come back after all of this anyways.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:23 AM ^
We furloughed almost 40% of our staff. Our issues go deeper than the stay at home order. Our non-profit raises a lot of money from in-person events. If those events still can't be had until the Fall or Winter, I'm afraid the furloughs will turn into permanent layoffs for those people.
April 21st, 2020 at 12:27 PM ^
We've laid off nearly 80%, basically just trying not to go BK at this point.
I feel really bad for those people while also realizing I may be next.
We are losing 1,000,000 jobs per day, honestly how long can this go with only 155 million in the work force?
Uh, 155 days?
Well if you want to be a smart ass at least get the math right, 26,000,000 are already out of work.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:13 PM ^
Hey, don’t get mad at me. You’re the one who didn’t give all the necessary data in the original problem.
It can go in forever because we cant have adult conversations. We have politicians hid behind trite phrases like "if it saves one life". We can't admit that death is undefeated. We cant acknowledge that 750,000 people died on average a day before this pandemic, and after the pandemic is over 750,000 people will die each day on the planet.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:35 PM ^
You are worried about having an adult conversation while blatantly making up statistics. You are right, nobody is admitting that 750,000 people died on an average day because that is a made up number. That would mean that 274 million people die each year, approximately 3.5% of the world’s population. 3.5% of the world’s population does not die each year, but do not let the facts get in the way of a great story. Also, yes death is undefeated. However, maybe I am crazy but I like to think that the fact that our average lifespan is significantly higher than most times in history is a positive development.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:36 PM ^
You are worried about having an adult conversation while blatantly making up statistics. You are right, nobody is admitting that 750,000 people died on an average day because that is a made up number. That would mean that 274 million people die each year, approximately 3.5% of the world’s population. 3.5% of the world’s population does not die each year, but do not let the facts get in the way of a great story. Also, yes death is undefeated. However, maybe I am crazy but I like to think that the fact that our average lifespan is significantly higher than most times in history is a positive development.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:13 AM ^
Necessity is the mother of invention. When you have a crisis and have to make changes, it gives you a chance to see things with a different perspective, often one that is more efficient. That happened in '09 and will most certainly happen now. That is one reason why recovery will be delayed along with a bunch of other reasons. If you are older and/or if you have an existing medical problem, life as you know it has changed and will continue to change until a vaccine/cure is found.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
That is not at all what is going on with hospitals.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
Yeah, because if we know one thing about recessions and other economic crises, it's that businesses do just fine and have no need to cut any costs in order to survive and keep making money.
The idea that they need a "cover" to cut staff is ridiculous. Firing unneeded staff is not illegal. If they wanted to cut some employees, they could have done that before the pandemic with no additional repercussions.
it certainly does create opportunity to identify inefficiencies. when half of staff in a given department is eliminated and yet the department continues to function with little ill effect...an opportunity has been identified. the company now has opportunity to grow by using those wages to create new revenue streams rather than going back to the less efficient prior model. one hopes the company has some loyalty to its prior employees and hires them back into the new more useful positions. companies that do not evolve soon do not exist.
The CEO slashed his pay to $2 million. He made $5.6 million last year.
Thoughts and prayers.
We've all learned recently that these high paid CEOs are basically useless.
If this pandemic doesn't end the enormous wage disparity in this country nothing ever will
April 21st, 2020 at 11:20 AM ^
"People are worth what others are willing to pay."
That's called Market Value
April 21st, 2020 at 11:40 AM ^
Just so happens that market value is vastly inflated over book value.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:57 AM ^
Not always. The CEO's of Worldcom, Enron, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, WAMU and Countrywide would disagree
The fact that any of those business were flying as high as they were prior to being torn down is kind of the point, isn't it?
Enron, financially was shit, but it's market value was inflated over it's book value (which was also inflated due to accounting BS).
Companies that have capital (assuming they aren't under water on things) are financially stable. Companies that don't, who have inflated market values, crash when people realize they've been investing in nothing or a portion of what a company actually is worth.
If this pandemic doesn't end the enormous wage disparity in this country nothing ever will
It not only won't end it, things will likely get even worse in the near future. How many small & medium sized companies in various industries will never come back from this? All of those dollars are now likely going to go to the large corporations that survived, and thus even more wealth will be transferred away from the little guy in the end.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:22 AM ^
More people will go into poverty because of this than have been in decades.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:09 AM ^
That CEO probably hasn't slept in a month, stress and blood pressure through the roof, and working around the clock to save what he can for that company. But yeah, probably better to hire someone who doesn't know what they're doing, at a fraction of the salary.
The biggest myth in business is that CEOs of large companies do nothing but play golf and rake in huge salaries. Their lives are totally consumed by work, and the vast majority of them earn every penny they make. Slash that CEO's salary to low six-figures, and good luck finding someone capable to come in and do the job.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Lol do you really think CEOs are worth THAT much more to a company like 40x more?
Please. The current wage discrepancy is ridiculous.
Edit: make that 200x-900x more
April 21st, 2020 at 10:46 AM ^
You are the problem. The country club bullshit that the C-suite has become in this country is worrisome.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:08 AM ^
Idk, say the average employee at a large company makes $45,000, multiply that by your 40x and we get $1.8 million which frankly sounds extremely reasonable for someone in charge of the entire enterprise and has to essentially dedicate every waking moment to that company and it's success in order to keep every $45,000 worker gainfully employed.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:11 AM ^
Okay let me rephrase that. Here I thought 40x more was a lot. Silly me.
900% more is more accurate per blahblahblah. Do you think CEOs are worth that much more to a company’s vitality?
This sounds to me more like a bunch of rich guys giving their buddies pay raises while the rest get fucked.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:22 AM ^
How exactly would life be better for the workers if, say, Mary Barra made a "reasonable" $1.5 million instead of $22 million?
April 21st, 2020 at 11:46 AM ^
You’re right. I guess it would be the same thought process in bailing out companies and giving them massive tax breaks for no reason and expecting them to invest instead of just buying shares back and laughing.
Who knows what they’ll do from that standpoint. Screw it. Let em go broke then. Sucks that poor leadership is rewarded by millions while the rest lose everything.