Cleveland Clinic executives told employees Tuesday morning that the health system is planning to eliminate about 200 jobs.
Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil placed the number of jobs cuts at “under 200,” and declined to provide greater detail on the number.
“We are consolidating services, and with that comes some minimal job impact,” said Sheil, noting that the Clinic employs 43,000 people.
Not all of the roughly 200 employees whose jobs will be eliminated have been informed yet. That’s expected to happen sometime this week, Sheil said.
“Change is very difficult, and it was not an easy morning,” she said. “We’ve worked very diligently to preserve jobs and have as minimal an impact as possible.”
Sheil characterized most of the cuts as being administrative jobs, but said some clinical employees would be cut, as well. The cuts are spread across the Clinic’s system, from its main campus on Cleveland’s East Side to its nine community hospitals throughout Northeast Ohio.
Much of the reason behind the cuts comes from the Clinic’s strategy to consolidate particular services at one or two hospitals. For example, in recent years the Clinic has stopped delivering babies at its main campus and has moved that service primarily to two of its community hospitals.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“Not all hospitals can be all things to all people,” Sheil said.
Cleveland Clinic also eliminated about 600 jobs through attrition during the last year.
However, the Clinic currently has “several hundred” job openings, and employees who will be cut are encouraged to apply for the open positions, Sheil said.
