Rumors and speculation regarding the future of West Tennessee Healthcare led CEO Bobby Arnold to release the following statement.
Like most hospitals and health systems in the state, West Tennessee Healthcare faces financial challenges due to the lack of Medicaid coverage expansion and declining reimbursement. As a result, we have experienced financial losses for the past eight months.
We have been looking at various options to address these financial challenges. We have implemented a rigorous process to evaluate and selectively fill open positions. We reduced the accrual rate by half for Paid Earned Time (PET) for all employees starting in March, 2014. Last week we also offered a voluntary retirement incentive program for some long term employees. We routinely evaluate and modify work force levels within individual departments to ensure maximum efficiency without compromising our major organizational goals of clinical excellence, patient safety and patient service. Within the last 60 days, we have had less than 10 position eliminations.
We are currently working on the budget for the next fiscal year. Unfortunately, we do not foresee an expansion of TennCare, the state Medicaid program, in the near future. Consequently as we prepare next year’s budget, we must look for ways to adjust our operations while continuing to fulfill our Mission, Vision and Goals.
No decisions have been made concerning any future reductions. However, workforce reductions can’t be ruled out because of the continued lack of Medicaid expansion and declining reimbursement for Tennessee hospitals.
