Reduction in staff, services an effort to cut costs at Mercy

This week Mercy Hospital Fort Scott announced a workforce reduction of 14 positions, closed its intensive care unit and plans to close its cardiac rehabilitation services July 1.

The steps are being taken “in response to economic changes in health care,” according to a Mercy statement released to The Tribune Thursday.

“Health care is expensive. There is absolutely no denying that,” Mercy Hospital Fort Scott President Reta Baker said Friday.

She said obtaining the equipment to provide health care costs the hospital a “significant amount of money.”

“We see increasing costs in drugs, we see increasing costs in equipment replacement, increasing costs in supplies,” Baker said. “We’ve worked very hard in the last 10 years not to pass costs on to the public, because costs are already high, so we’ve been very careful in not making that happen.

“So it makes it difficult to keep our reimbursement up to our expenses.”

She said making cuts such as Mercy Fort Scott has had to make is hard on the staff.

“(It’s) very hard on the staff to see things changing and understand the economy of it,” Baker said.

Mercy’s struggle is not new. In January 2014, Mercy Hospital Fort Scott laid off 12 employees and prior to that reduction, 20 to 25 positions were not filled.

In June 2014, one full time employee and another who served in Fort Scott and Independence, were laid off.

In spring 2014, the services fell under scrutiny when a discernment committee was formed to determine the hospital’s future.

In September 2015, it was announced Mercy Hospital Independence would close, but the local task force focusing on the Fort Scott hospital made a recommendation to keep Mercy Fort Scott open. At the same time, it was stated Mercy would continue to review its services.

Baker said the hospital has taken several steps to reduce costs. Some of those steps sound trivial, but add up. For example, there are numerous tall windows in the hospital building that are now washed annually. Water coolers have been eliminated from throughout the building.

Staff have looked at ways to change processes, and obtaining service contracts for better prices.

“Many, many efforts have been made to keep from impacting people,” Baker said.

Since December, 15 positions have been vacated and not filled, Baker said.

“If we hadn’t been proactive months ago, (the workforce reduction) could have been higher than that,” Baker said.