More Layoffs In Store for Catholic Health Initiatives.

  Kentucky unlikely to be spared.

Tamara Chuang of the Denver Post reported yesterday of an announcement by CHI confirming the 1500 additional job cuts planned for January 2015. Laura Ungar of our own Courier-Journal was ahead of the game in reporting this considerable reduction.

From Denver: “As a result of lower-than-expected operating and financial performance in the first quarter of the 2015 fiscal year, Catholic Health Initiatives and its market organizations will take action to reduce expenses across the system,” said spokesman Michael Romano. “The losses were due to a number of external and internal factors, including reduced utilization of services.”

The positions to be cut will be announced in mid-January are said to focus on administrative and support staff and to affect the entire national enterprise. Given that KentuckyOne Health is one of the larger of CHI’s regional operations and continues to produce the largest financial losses, it must be assumed that additional job cuts will follow the 500 or so lost last March in Kentucky.

This unfortunate news is not a complete surprise. CHI’s financial report for FY 2014 released last month showed a slowing of recent losses, but KentuckyOne was the only region of CHI losing money.  The profit from operations nationwide was razor-thin.  I am unaware of how the earlier job cuts were spread out around the state, but I am told that the cuts hurt, and even led to decreased clinical capacity in some facilities. The required formal financial report for the first quarter of FU 2015 will not be available until the end of the month. It should contain more specifics.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD
President, KHPI
December 7, 2014