Clifton Springs hospital to restructure workforce

Clifton Springs Hospital & Clinic announced Friday that it has reduced its workforce by 58 full-time equivalent positions. Eligible employees were offered severance packages.“Like many hospitals across the State of New York, Clifton Springs Hospital & Clinic is preparing for the Affordable Care Act,” said Dr. Lewis Zulick, Clifton Springs Hospital President and CEO. “The decision to reduce staff is difficult for all involved but necessary as we streamline operations preparing for the potential reductions in reimbursement, and a shift in how future services will be delivered. We expect that, under the Affordable Care Act, physicians and hospitals will be further incentivized, through changes to their reimbursements, to keep their communities healthier and provide more service in the home and outpatient settings. In preparing for this trend, we engaged a labor management consulting team that compared our workforce to that of 30 other Hospitals our size.That effort produced awareness that our workforce structure needed to be adjusted if we were to maintain a financially sound, full service Hospital with the resources required to invest in future technologies, our staff, and the emerging services that will best serve our Community in the face of the national and local changes in the healthcare industry.”