How people are treated

[Pharmado]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I’ve noticed that my small (100ish beds) community hospital which touts family friendly values and close community ties, has made a significant number of less than kind staffing moves as of late. This includes dissolving positions without notice with a ‘by the way your job doesn’t exist anymore’ kind of attitude. No significant efforts were made to keep people whose jobs were dissolved, despite years of service to the hospital. A single nurse now heads the main OR, same day surgery and endoscopy and has repeatedly said “anyone is replaceable,” something that people are testing as they leave in mass. Every week we celebrate people with carry-in lunches as they leave for greener pastures. The exact reasoning behind the moves is unclear, though getting rid of more expensive individuals and replacing them with newer and cheaper staff has to be considered.

As a physician, my job is safe. I’ve no doubt the CFO would replace me in a heartbeat if he could find a cheaper alternative, but he can’t find someone to come to this BFE town. Regardless, I’m disturbed by how others are being treated. People are important and should be valued for the work they do and the personalities they bring with them. Even ignoring the obvious difficulties of training new staff, I’m frustrated at the lack of loyalty and decency. Perhaps this is simply business as usual and I should except it, but I find it rough to swallow when people with 3+ decades at the hospital are having their jobs eliminated or are leaving to do travel nursing because they feel disrespected and unappreciated. Is this just how medicine is?

 

[2Fast2Des]

That is how it is today, corporate culture rules the day. Every body is a cog in the machine and replaceable as needed to fill the coffers or slots. I'm in a community hospital where we have a bunch of travelers coming in every month, basically a rotating cast of characters. Nobody good wants to come or stay permanently because they don't pay well compared to the area which there are plenty of hospitals to go to. There are new young nurses coming out, joining just for perioperative training, learning how to scrub and be a circulator and then they leave after a year or two after completing the program, getting their skills, going off for better money and pastures. The leadership is dumb as rocks and all they care about is metrics which translates to absolute nada in terms of patient care. Even our anesthesia chairman is all about making sure we are compliant to make the leadership is happy and make sure our numbers are all up to par. Even when surgeons complain about us individually to him, instead of inquiring with each of us about what was the issue, instead we get reprimanded for something that the surgeon has no idea about from the anesthetic standpoint, ex. Patient coughed during total knee under spinal (morbid obese, osa, etc) with sedation and the anesthesiologist was trying to get them in a comfortable plane, another was a story that the GI doctor complained that the patient was moaning during a colonoscopy and said the anesthesia was inadequate (on a very sick pt where the doc was making sure the pt would live and pt was fine after and no recall). So instead of asking the person who was in the case tell their story and figure out what we can do things better, discipline first and ask no questions!

 

[deleted126335]

Small hospitals in BFE are closing in increasing numbers. Administrative jobs are on the line almost everywhere to improve the financials. No margin. No mission.

 

[DirtDocMD]

Most hospitals today are “corporate-owned”. Compare this to even 20-25 years ago (1990’s), when most were probably “not-for-profit”. Gone are the days of Presbyterian/Baptist/Methodist/Saint/County whatever.

I’d say it is quite rare for a CEO to last longer than 5 years at a hospital, these days. “Corporate” makes a point of shuffling these guys around, I think, on purpose. It is either a “step up” or “step down” on the corporate ladder, depending on how well they answer to “corporate”, NOT the Docs/Nurses/Community. Every 3-5 years, it’s some new “plan” to “cut costs”, “streamline”, or build “capital projects”. In a few years, they (CEO) is off to somewhere else, and the locals are stuck with the aftermath.

It’d be nice if hospitals had 10-20 year plans to benefit the workers and community, not a 3 year plan to benefit some CEO’s resume and corporate profits...

 

[Pharmado]

My community hospital is non-profit with one of those charitable Biblical names, but there isn’t much Christian attitude among the brass.

 

[DirtDocMD]

My community hospital is non-profit with one of those charitable Biblical names, but there isn’t much Christian attitude among the brass.

Maybe “polishing the books” to try and sell the thing, soon. Who knows? Seems like lots of the “administrative nurses” are way more concerned about pleasing administration and “compliance issues” than supporting patients and staff...

 

[LineAndBerry]

That is how it is today, corporate culture rules the day. ...……..The leadership is dumb as rocks and all they care about is metrics which translates to absolute nada in terms of patient care.

So true. That says it well.

In the Asinine New Ideas Dept, has anyone else been forced to go through the "Lean" quasi-religious cult? Our admin. had hospital-wide meetings 3 days a week for over two years. Far more money was lost in productivity than ever could have been saved by some of the bizarre programs we tried. This stuff comes out of MIT, Yale, Harvard Business, etc., filters to big corporations, and then, years later, long after the fad is over and shown to be another total waste of time, hospital admin finds out about it. Makes great fodder for satire though.

 

[lymphocyte]

This stuff comes out of MIT, Yale, Harvard Business, etc., filters to big corporations, and then, years later, long after the fad is over and shown to be another total waste of time, hospital admin finds out about it. Makes great fodder for satire though.

This is amazingly accurate.

 

[Planktonmd]

It's all about the money and anyone who thinks otherwise does not really understand the current state of healthcare business in the united states.
Medicine is no longer a healing profession where patients come first, it is a cut throat business run by corporations with only one focus: profit.

 

[ProRealDoc]

I’ve noticed that my small (100ish beds) community hospital which touts family friendly values and close community ties, has made a significant number of less than kind staffing moves as of late. This includes dissolving positions without notice with a ‘by the way your job doesn’t exist anymore’ kind of attitude. No significant efforts were made to keep people whose jobs were dissolved, despite years of service to the hospital. A single nurse now heads the main OR, same day surgery and endoscopy and has repeatedly said “anyone is replaceable,” something that people are testing as they leave in mass. Every week we celebrate people with carry-in lunches as they leave for greener pastures. The exact reasoning behind the moves is unclear, though getting rid of more expensive individuals and replacing them with newer and cheaper staff has to be considered.

As a physician, my job is safe. I’ve no doubt the CFO would replace me in a heartbeat if he could find a cheaper alternative, but he can’t find someone to come to this BFE town. Regardless, I’m disturbed by how others are being treated. People are important and should be valued for the work they do and the personalities they bring with them. Even ignoring the obvious difficulties of training new staff, I’m frustrated at the lack of loyalty and decency. Perhaps this is simply business as usual and I should except it, but I find it rough to swallow when people with 3+ decades at the hospital are having their jobs eliminated or are leaving to do travel nursing because they feel disrespected and unappreciated. Is this just how medicine is?

Only the bottom line matters, everything else be damned!