By Dale Quinn, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Jul. 2–More than 60 Pima Health System employees will be laid off at the end of the September because the health-care provider lost its bid to provide services to local Medicaid patients.
Losing its contract with the state’s Medicaid program, called the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS, means Pima Health System will lose 27,000 of its 30,000 acute-care members.
The significant membership reduction means the health-care provider, which is a non-profit arm of Pima County, won’t need to keep all its employees, said Virginia Rountree, deputy director.
For the new fiscal year, which began Tuesday, the county had budgeted 777 full-time-equivalent positions for Pima Health System, Rountree said.
The county decided to reduce the number of full-time-equivalent positions by 187 because of the decrease in acute-care members, a move that will take effect Oct. 1, Rountree said.
Due to budget constraints, only 63 of those positions are currently filled, and it’s those employees who will be laid off at the end of September, Rountree said. The employees were notified of the layoffs late last week, she said.
The layoffs include all levels of positions, including clerical support, member services, accounting staff and nurses, Rountree said.
The county doesn’t offer a severance package, but employees will be paid for vacation time, she said.
No further staff reductions are immediately expected. “At this point in time, this is all the layoffs,” Rountree said.
Though it’s losing 27,000 members, Pima Health System is keeping 590 full-time-equivalent positions because it still has about 4,500 members who get care through its Arizona long-term-care system, which is also through AHCCCS.
“That benefit package is much more comprehensive,” Rountree said. “It requires each member have a case manager and requires more individualized oversight and support of their care needs.”
AHCCCS awarded its latest round of five-year. acute-care-service contracts in mid-May. The services are used by low-income families with children, pregnant women, children and disabled people.
Pima Health System was allowed to keep its members who also qualify for Medicare, which is the federal program that provides health-care assistance to those over 65.
But with that enrollment cap, its acute-care members would plummet from 30,000 to 3,000. Most of those members are in Pima County, but some are in Santa Cruz County.
Pima Health System has challenged the bid process that denied the health-care provider its contract, and AHCCCS notified them there will be a hearing to address its concerns.
A date for that hearing has not been set, Rountree said, but the health-care provider must move forward as if it’s losing its members.
–Contact reporter Dale Quinn at 573-4197 or [email protected].
—–
To see more of The Arizona Daily Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.azstarnet.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Comments