| Austin Breastfeeding Task Force in the Media | |
Dana Michaud 512-554-4828
Laura Smith 512-228-9906
austinbreastfeedingtaskforce@yahoo.com
Dr. Harvey Spark, MD is available
for comments and interview with the media.
Dr. Spark is a pediatrician
and board certified lactation consultant. He is a member of the American Academy
of Pediatrics and the Texas Pediatric Society. As a physician, he runs a central
Texas breastfeeding support center with another lactation consultant in Waco,
TX.
(254) 756-6836
Seton announces $30
million in cuts to cope with budget shortfall
Cuts include layoffs, closing of Lakeway clinic and cutbacks in services at
Seton hospitals
By Mary Ann Roser
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 30, 2004
Seton Healthcare Network announced $30 million in cuts Thursday, including the loss of 275 positions, the closing of Seton Lakeway Clinic and cutbacks in various hospital services.
The cuts, which Seton warned would be forthcoming in March, are aimed at closing a $60 million gap between expenses and revenue that Seton expects in the 2005 budget year starting July 1. The remaining $30 million will come from savings that can be achieved from discount drug purchasing, using technology more creatively and other initiatives.
Seton officials said they are grappling with several factors that clouded their revenue forecast, including fewer than expected patients, state cuts in health care that sent more uninsured patients to their hospitals and reduced payments from government insurers, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
The services Seton is eliminating include the use of breast-feeding specialists at four hospitals, certain heart programs at Seton Medical Center, specialty clinics at Brackenridge Hospital that have been financed with grants, and the Good Health magazine that Seton produces and sends to homes in the community. Seton also is reducing spending on Skippy Express, a mobile health clinic for children (from $436,000 this year to $198,353 in the upcoming budget year), and the Child Life and Specialty Care departments at Children's Hospital, which provide support services to the sickest children and their parents.
Of the 275 positions being eliminated, 161 are vacant, said Pat Hayes, the network's executive vice president and chief operating officer. Of the remaining 114, a dozen workers quit voluntarily. All terminated employees are getting severance packages that include at least four weeks of pay.
Any displaced nurses should be able to find a home elsewhere in the Seton network, and the rest will get help job hunting, Hayes said.
Seton, the third-largest private employer in Central Texas with 7,800 employees, sent counselors to five of its seven acute-care hospitals to help employees cope Thursday.
"Mostly it's been shock, and a little bit of anger," said Marcia Silverberg, vice president of human resources.
Laura Smith of Austin, who has worked for 2 1/2 years as a breast-feeding educator at Brackenridge, said she was stunned that Seton would eliminate that service from her hospital, Seton Medical Center, Seton Northwest and Children's.
"Nurses do not have time to provide that kind of care -- even if they want to," said Smith, who said she would sometimes spend several hours at a patient's bedside. "Some of them are threatening to resign. They see it as the hospital going down the tubes."
Poor breast-feeding can cause breast infections in women and jaundice and other problems in babies, Smith said.
She found it ironic that Seton -- which operates Brackenridge and Children's hospitals for the city -- was spending money on new a nursery at Brackenridge but couldn't keep six full- and part-time lactation specialists.
Elizabeth Polinard, a registered nurse at Seton Medical Center on the mother-baby floor, said she had just four hours of orientation in breast-feeding and relied heavily on lactation experts.
"There are some things we haven't been trained to do that we'll be expected to," Polinard said. "That will create a hardship."
Hayes said the decisions were tough but had to be made.
"It's painful when you restructure things," Hayes said. "It feels like a loss."
Officials looked for items that would not harm patient care or safety, she said.
For example, Seton Medical Center will close its Heart Failure Clinic and Pacemaker/Coumadin Clinic July 1 because those services can be found elsewhere, she said. The center's heart transplant program, however, will continue because it's the only one in the region.
Seton Lakeway Clinic will close Aug. 31.
Naked City
Responding to Seton Cuts
BY AMY SMITH
Seton Healthcare Network's move to slash 275 positions and cut a variety of services has prompted the formation of a task force to try to reinstate one of the programs eliminated last week. The Austin Breastfeeding Task Force organized this week as part of an educational and lobbying effort to get lactation services back into Seton-run hospitals. The task force is made up of recently laid off lactation consultants at Brackenridge and Seton facilities, as well as representatives from other community groups, such as Heart of Texas Lactation Consultants; Mothers' Milk Bank at Austin; and Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies. "We are not a group of angry lactation consultants," said Dana Michaud, who served as a Brackenridge breast-feeding educator until notified of her layoff last Thursday. "What we'd like to do is open a dialogue with Seton to see how we can work together to continue providing these services."
A long-term goal of the task force is to establish comprehensive breast-feeding support services at all Austin hospitals, regardless of budget constraints, Michaud said. Seton's own financial shortfall is in the neighborhood of $60 million. To cope with that hardship, the health care network is closing its Lakeway clinic, discontinuing its Good Health magazine, and eliminating several heart programs, in addition to breast-feeding services. The 275 jobs eliminated involved about 100 actual layoffs; 161 positions were vacant and 12 employees quit voluntarily, according to Seton.
Members of the newly formed task
force point out that the overall health care benefits of Seton's lactation services
outweigh any funding that might be saved from discontinuing the program. They
point to statistics showing that breast-fed babies are healthier babies, which
is particularly important when considering that Brackenridge's patient mix among
new mothers is largely made up of low-income women. And while breast-feeding
is a natural process, the process itself doesn't always come naturally for women.
"The idea that this [cut] wouldn't affect patient care is an incorrect
notion," said Gretchen Flatau, executive director of Mothers' Milk Bank.
"What we'd like them to realize is that this is not a good budgetary decision
when you consider this in terms of community health care issues."
The American-Statesman reported on April 30, 2004 that lactation services at the Seton Healthcare Network are being dismantled. This article misrepresents the impact on both breastfeeding and the health of infants.
According to this article, breast-feeding specialists, or lactation consultants, are to be eliminated from four of the Seton hospitals. Pat Hayes, the Seton network's executive vice president and chief operating officer, is quoted as saying that the decisions were difficult, but cuts are being made in places that do not harm patient safety or care.
The benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and their infants are well established. Eliminating lactation services will increase the risk of having complications with the infant including jaundice, dehydration, and poor growth. It is clear that a good lactation program can lower these complications that occur in the immediate neonatal period as well as increase our breastfeeding rates.
Mothers who wish to breastfeed will find it hard to obtain help while they are still in the hospital. The first few days after delivery are crucial to many mothers who choose to breastfeed and lactation consultants provide information and support that makes for a successful and safe transition home.
Further, since breastfeeding has been show to improve the overall health status of our infants, breastfeeding should be the goal we seek as healthcare professionals.
Successful self-supporting breastfeeding programs exist in the United States that increase breastfeeding rates, decrease hospital costs, and improve the health of communities. The Seton system is in an ideal position to positively effect health care in the city of Austin by adopting a progressive approach to breastfeeding.
Audelio Rivera, MD, FAAP
President, Mothers' Milk Bank at Austin
Gretchen Flatau, MPA
Executive Director, MMBA
Kim Updegrove, CNM, MSN, MPH
Clinical Coordinator, MMBA