Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian cut about 3.5% of its work force, or 175 jobs, last week.
Hoag has campuses in Newport Beach and Irvine, along with several other healthcare offices and clinics.
The job cuts hit non-clinical positions, such as medical billers, administrative assistants and human resources employees, and were made across its operations, according to hospital executives.
None of the 1,400 doctors on Hoag’s medical staff were affected by job cuts.
“Hard Choices”
The “hard choices” on layoffs will allow the hospital to get through a tough economic environment in a strong position, according to a statement. The hospital said that it accelerated layoff plans as part of a “realignment” prompted by a combination of a weak economy, high unemployment and a shift in how insurance companies pay for healthcare.
Laid-off workers will receive severance pay, benefit assistance and continuation, as well as help in finding new jobs, Hoag said.
Hoag generally ranks among the top three Orange County hospitals in terms of net patient revenue, logging $719.8 million in the 12 months ended last September.
The news of Hoag’s layoffs comes shortly after St. Joseph Health System, an Orange-based hospital operator with four local campuses, said it would cut 144 jobs across at two of them.
Those cuts will come through a combination of voluntary departures, attrition and layoffs in response to the economy, healthcare reform and reimbursement.
Those cuts are slated for clerical workers to managers and registered nurses at St. Joseph Hospital-Orange and Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. Departures will come in phases running through Oct. 3, according to industry newsletter Becker’s Hospital Review.
Past Job Growth
Before its recent announcement, Hoag’s annual report showed that the hospital added some 900 jobs, primarily in the run-up to the September 2010 opening of Hoag Hospital Irvine.
Hoag mainly staffed up in May through August 2010, Robert Braithwaite, senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Hoag system, said in an earlier interview.
Hoag took over the former building that housed Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center in early 2009 and spent some $85 million to convert it into Hoag Hospital Irvine.
Braithwaite said that Hoag Irvine’s hiring process started while construction was in the works.
“Like any organization, we first scoped out the services we were going to provide and developed a recruitment plan for the necessary skill sets,” he said.
Positions at the hospital were in demand. Braithwaite said the system eventually received 130,000 applications for jobs at the Irvine campus.
Nearly half of Hoag Irvine’s clinical staff transferred from the main hospital in Newport Beach to provide the new hospital with a base of experienced workers, Braithwaite said.
“We wanted to populate the hospital with some deep experience, to make sure that it had the (Hoag) culture,” he said.
Hoag hired workers for the Newport Beach hospital to replace the employees who transferred to Irvine.
Hoag Irvine did face some hiring challenges that other California hospitals have seen—it had no problems finding nurses and “plenty” of pharmacy applicants, but struggled early on with finding late-shift pharmacists, Braithwaite said.
