Baystate Health Announces Elimination of 134 Leadership Positions

SPRINGFIELD — In the wake of its decision to eliminate 134 leadership positions, Baystate Health released the following statement on Nov. 13:

“Baystate Health maintains its focus on delivering high-quality care and experience to the communities of Western Massachusetts, while addressing our path forward to return our 141-year organization to strong growth and further our leadership position.

“As a system, we are driving toward transformational change to deliver core operations improvements of more than $225 million over the next two years. Our $300 million in operating losses over the past few years has eroded our balance sheet, including our days cash on hand. This weakened financial position has severely limited our organization, especially our ability to invest in our people and grow to meet community needs. Our transformation will allow us to invest $1.2 billion back into our team members, renovations, growth, access, and our community over the next six years.

“This week, we are taking our first step in our transformation with the difficult decision to reduce 134 leadership positions across Baystate, resulting in a reduction of less than 1% of our workforce. We are significantly decreasing management spans and layers to improve efficiency, reduce costs without impacting bedside care, streamline decision making, and better enable our caregivers. While some of the impacted positions are currently vacant and will no longer be filled, there are leaders leaving Baystate.

“We know these transitions heartfeltly impact our people and their families. We are working to find alternate positions for those whose roles were eliminated, and eligible team members who are not transitioned to another position in our organization will receive severance pay and other job support, including access to career transition services. We continue to recruit and hire physicians, advanced practice providers, and bedside caregivers.

“As we transition into the new year, we are actively engaged in pulling other transformation levers in the areas of external spend and corporate overhead as well as completing assessments of our revenue cycle and real-estate portfolio. Our revenue levers for transformation are focused on improving patient access, streamlining service delivery (throughput), becoming more efficient and effective in revenue cycle management, and strategic growth.

“Our mission and values always guide our work, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to improve the health of the people in our communities every day, with quality and compassion.”