Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 4

                COLLEGE HOSPITAL OF LONG BEACH

               The change in ownership of Pacific Hospital of Long Beach from Healthsmart Pacific to College Health Enterprises was delayed for a week but the employees were able to start reapplying for their jobs two weeks before that. It appears that the new official name is now College Hospital of Long Beach. With the change in ownership, the psychiatric unit which was being managed by the Memorial Counseling Associates has had a sudden drop in the number of inpatients because the doctors from that group have lost their admitting privileges. See, MCA has their own intake department and doctors group which funnel patients coming from Pacific Hospital's emergency department and other area hospitals towards the 3 psych units Pacific (in this case, College) Hospital has. College Health Enterprises have their own intake department called Access Services and their own admitting doctors. With the loss of MCA, the psych units have lost a lot of patients due to discharges and needs to reestablish a new patient base before the census goes up again. In hospital parlance, census is the number of patients who are being treated on the unit.

                 The consequence of having a low census is that the staff have to take turns getting cancelled from work due to staffing ratios. The hospital only needs a certain number of staff to cover a certain number of patients. Hospital workers know about this and I may be overexplaining myself for the sake of making it clear for non-healthcare workers. On the first official day of College Hospital running the show, it just so happened that it was my turn to get cancelled, which hasn't happened in approximately 2 years. Thus, I got a call from the nursing supervisor at about 5:30 p.m. on Monday notifying me so, because the census in the unit I work in, which has a capacity of 36, had dropped to 18. Ergo, not only are we in danger or being laid off, but while waiting for word if we are going to be rehired or not, we are already losing income because of the low census. Our first hope is that census rebuilding won't take too long by reassigning the psych patients who show up in the emergency department to the College Hospital doctors. The second hope of course is to be rehired.

                There should not be a similar problem with medical patients though, since there won't be a change in the admitting privileges of the doctors. The only change they are having is that Molina Healthcare will be managing the medical units. But I could be wrong since I'm not privy to that kind of information. Meanwhile last week, a representative from the labor union which College Hospital Cerritos employees belong to, contacted me via email after reading my blog, asking questions which I didn't know the answers to.

This wasn't meant to be a series of posts but it had become so as things have evolved. Here are the links to my previous posts regarding this matter: 

Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 1

Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 2

Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 3

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Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 3

         In my previous blog regarding this subject, I mentioned that I wish I had the facts (Questions and Concerns at Pacific Hospital - Part 2). Well we received some information on Thursday, August 29th about what was going to happen to the hospital and our jobs. It was finally confirmed that Pacific Hospital of Long Beach was sold to College Health Enterprises who owns College Hospital. They will be in partnership with Molina Healthcare who will be managing the medical units while College Health will be doing the same with the psych units. I believe Pacific Hospital had a similar arrangement with Molina a few years back. As far as our jobs are concerned, all employees will be terminated and the expected layoff date is October 29th. We will be asked to reapply with College Health Enterprises effective September 9th when they take over. As required by law, we were given a notice informing us of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which we had to sign. A memo from the current owner of Pacific Hospital mentioned that employees rehired by College/Molina will continue benefits and retain any accrued PTO (vacation time). At least the part about the PTO is a relief. In case of a layoff, there is no mention of severance pay.
          With all that information, more questions and concerns arise but basically similar to what I wrote in Part 2. There is no guarantee of being rehired but at least it gives as a couple of months of leeway to find another job. Believe me, I've already started looking but what I've seen so far as being offered in area hospitals are per diem (no benefits) positions. Questions include - will the shifts go back to 8 hours or continue with 12 hours; if rehired and basically starting from scratch, will the pay scale be lower; since Memorial Counseling Associates will no longer be managing the psych unit, will there be a change in doctors; will it be better to gamble and resign so I can cash in my PTO then reapply with the new company, or wait to be laid off? Being laid off, though not good, is better than resigning because at least you can collect unemployment insurance, which is not much, but better than nothing. If rehired by the new company though, at least medical and dental insurance benefits will continue even if there is a decrease in pay. What about our 401k retirement plan? Will it roll over to College Hospital's investment company, or will it be up to us to keep it in the same place or transfer it to our own investment company? In an ideal world, if some of us get laid off, it would have been nice to get some severance pay in addition to the PTO being cashed out. Or if rehired, it would be good if they just pay off the Pacific Hospital PTO and start from zero with whatever vacation benefits that College Health has. I can dream, can't I?

Disclosure: I worked at College Hospital Cerritos twice - once in 1981(when their area code was still 213) which was my first ever psychiatric hospital job, a few months after moving to the United States, and the second time in the mid-90's. I have also experienced a couple of lay offs. The first with Los Altos Hospital and the second with Lakewood Regional Medical Center, both which gave employees several weeks worth of severance pay. And finally, Barry Weiss, who is the owner of College Health Enterprises is the brother of my colonoscopy doctor - Steven Weiss.

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