HealthAlliance Hospital announces layoffs

HealthAlliance CEO Deborah Weymouth announced in a memo Wednesday that the Leominster hospital will be conducting layoffs through the end of the fiscal year.

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By Emily Micucci

HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster on Wednesday said it will lay off employees from clinical and administrative departments, including managerial staff, due to declining patient volumes.

The layoffs will take place between now and the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, according to a memo from HealthAlliance CEO Deborah Weymouth. HealthAlliance, which is part of the UMass Memorial Health Care system, did not include details about the number of jobs to be cut, and a spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

“Given the dramatic and sweeping changes taking place nationally and regionally in health care, going forward, we will continue to review our staffing levels and make adjustments. We know that any workforce reduction involves real people and real jobs. These are difficult decisions that are taken very seriously particularly when they involve those who have supported the mission we share on behalf of the people in North Central Massachusetts,” Weymouth said in the memo.

Wednesday’s announcement follows a handful of layoffs within HealthAlliance’s information technology department in Leominster, and on its Burbank Campus in Fitchburg, in April.

Michael Cofone, who was acting as interim president at HealthAlliance in April before Weymouth stepped in as CEO, said at the time that fewer patients were being admitted due to changes in federal reimbursements, and instead were being treated under “observation status,” which nets lower reimbursements for insurers.

"We're trying to keep up…with lower payment rates. We are trying to stay with it so we don't slip into larger losses," Cofone said in April.

Though HealthAlliance was operating in the black at the end of the second quarter on March 31, its operating surplus had declined sharply to $344,165, down from $1.43 million a year earlier, according to data published by the state Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA).