Hospital in Salem to cut nurse jobs

A state fee will cost the hospital $95,000 more this year.

STAFF REPORT

SALEM — Salem Community Hospital announced late Monday that it will cut the equivalent of 10 registered-nurse positions, effective April 1.

Michele Hoffmeister, the hospital’s director of public relations, said in a prepared statement: “While other hospitals have experienced shortages of registered nurses, SCH has been fortunate to maintain a fully staffed nursing department through our recruitment efforts and partnerships with local universities. However, a decrease in the number of patients treated as inpatients compounded by the statewide hospital assessment fee and escalating charity care and bad debt has made this reduction necessary.”

Care, she said, will not be compromised.

SCH, a not-for-profit health-care provider, must pay the State of Ohio’s hospital assessment fee. Similar to a tax, the fee will cost the hospital in excess of $1,235,000 this year.

That figure is scheduled to increase to more than $1,330,000 in July of this year.

In addition, the hospital’s charity care and bad debt is projected to top $11 million for fiscal year 2010, Hoffmeister said.

She couldn’t be reached to say what those figures were in past years or when the hospital’s fiscal year ends.

In the past year, the hospital eliminated several management and nonmanagement positions as part of a cost-cutting plan.

“Although we are reducing the total number of registered nurses at SCH, ... the number of nurses assigned to provide patient care on a shift- to-shift basis will remain at current levels,” she said.