CLEVELAND, Ohio — Following a year of belt tightening, the Cleveland Clinic has revealed plans to hire 1,800 workers — from doctors to support staff — next year, though Cleveland’s largest employer lost $62 million in 2008, according to the Plain Dealer.
Most of the new jobs — 1,600 of them — would be created at the Clinic’s main campus in University Circle, the Plain Dealer reported. Much of the health system’s 2008 loss came from investments that lost value as financial markets fell that year. The Clinic had a 2008 revenue of $4.9 billion, according to the Plain Dealer. The Clinic posted its 2008 tax filing at its Web site today (pdf).
The Clinic is not the only local health system that expects to add jobs in coming months. Last week, University Hospitals announced it would hire more than 500 people next year, largely to staff a new cancer hospital in Cleveland and medical center in Beachwood.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Meanwhile, MetroHealth System, owned by Cuyahoga County, has posted 270 full- and part-time job openings, the Plain Dealer reported. MetroHealth has cut hundreds of jobs in the last two years, the newspaper said.
The more than 2,500 likely hires at the three hospital systems in Greater Cleveland seem to be at odds with a recent member survey by the Ohio Hospital Association. In late November, nearly half of the association’s 175-member hospitals said they already had cut jobs and two in three hospitals said they had not filled job vacancies. One in five responding hospitals said they expected to cut more jobs in the future and half expected to let future vacancies go unfilled.
At the time, the survey findings were consistent with comments made the prior week by the Cleveland Clinic and Summa Health System in Akron, which were filling only necessary positions.
Then, the hospital association said Ohio hospitals were coping with the effects of the recession — from lower reimbursements from federal Medicaid and Medicare programs, to treating more uninsured patients, some of whom couldn’t afford to pay — by cutting jobs or letting job vacancies go unfilled, cutting services and delaying expansions.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
A week later, the hospital association said its unemployment program, which processes about 70 percent of hospital unemployment claims in the state, had processed 1,137 claims related to layoffs since the beginning of 2009, said Tiffany Himmelreich, spokeswoman for the association.
The three Cleveland hospitals likely are able to gear up hiring now because they were ready for the economic downturn, said William Ryan, president and chief executive of the Center for Health Affairs, the association of hospitals in Greater Cleveland.
The Clinic, University Hospitals and MetroHealth had strong operating margins and cost controls in the last few years, if not longer. These institutions also cut out unnecessary expenses before the recession hit. Having done that, “you end up with a hospital that is financial viable, even in a down cycle,” Ryan said.
Hospitals that were “not proactive when there was the opportunity to make money are now caught in a decline in demand,” he said. Such hospitals also could be hurt by a wave of patients who have become uninsured or begun participating in federal health programs because they lost their jobs during the recession. “So now [these hospitals] are really scrambling,” Ryan said.
