When Hospital Closes, Workers’ Woes Pile Up

Rosemary Foisy was among the first to be hired when Fullerton Community Hospital opened. She signed on as a nurse because she liked its family-type atmosphere. It was small--just 56 beds--and she and other staff members felt pride in the personalized care that they provided.

Although she received offers for better-paying jobs, Foisy stayed over the next 27 years, working in the maternity, surgical and supply purchasing departments. She figured she would would remain there till she retired.

In September, when Foisy, 53, had been at the hospital almost half her life, when staffers had become to seem more like family than colleagues, she received abrupt and shattering news: The hospital was going to close.

In just two days, she and 117 others would be out of their jobs.

“There was a lot of crying (among the staff) because a lot of us had worked together for 10 or 15 years,” Foisy said. “We felt like we were leaving our family.”

Now, three months later, Foisy is still unemployed and still looking.

She has applied to 20 employers with no luck--at least not the kind she would like. “I’d been making $12.50 an hour, but the places where I’ve interviewed haven’t been willing to offer more than $8 an hour,” she said, noting this would be a 35% pay cut. “With my experience, these offers are insulting.”

Foisy, who lives in Placentia, has lost more than a $500-a-week paycheck. She says she has lost a sense of belonging, community and her faith in the work ethic.

No figures have been compiled on the employment status of former employees of the hospital. However, interviews with seven women, who former hospital administrator Dan Woolf said represent a cross section of those who worked there, show that Foisy and two others still are looking for full-time jobs. The remaining four have found jobs but have had to take pay cuts of 35% or more.

And all seven said they are still coping with the psychological and financial trauma of being laid off for the first time in their lives. It has been a shocking and humbling experience.

Consultant’s View

A number of Orange County residents face a similar situation, said job search consultant Lewis Newman, whom Fullerton Community Hospital hired to help employees.

Orange County has an unemployment rate of only 4%, 2.9% lower than the national average. However, this rosy statistic masks the human toll inflicted on workers, many of whom are finding themselves without jobs for the first time, however temporarily, said Alta Yetter Gale, Orange County labor market analyst for the state Employment Development Department’s office in Santa Ana.

The county recently has experienced company closings, some layoffs by large corporations, mergers and takeovers because of increased international competition and federal deregulation, said James Doti, dean of the Chapman College School of Business and Management and leader of a team that produces annual economic forecasts for Orange County. “The result is a loss of jobs and a paring of other expenses by companies that are being forced to economize by this increased competition.”

Said employment consultant Newman: “Fullerton Community wasn’t losing money due to poor staff service.”

In fact, the former hospital employees believe that they could have come to terms with their situation better if they had been fired because of poor job performance. Instead, they were laid off for national economic reasons beyond their control.

Losses Led to Closure

Anaheim Memorial Hospital Medical Centers Inc., which had owned the facility since 1980, shut it down because of losses of $100,000 a month, spokesmen said. They added that attempts to sell Fullerton Community to other hospital chains proved unsuccessful.

The hospital was a casualty of tighter Medicare rules introduced three years ago that reimburse hospitals for only about 70% of the cost of caring for patients over age 65, former hospital administrator Woolf said.

Under these rules, hospitals are paid a flat fee based on the type of illness, regardless of the actual cost of treatment. This was a particular financial drain on Fullerton because 65% of its patients were on Medicare, Woolf said.

To ease the trauma on departing employees, Anaheim Memorial hired Newman’s counseling firm to conduct workshops on job search techniques. (Newman said his contract with Anaheim Memorial prevented him from disclosing the fee that he and his four colleagues were paid for the two days they spent at the hospital when it closed, running workshops and conducting follow-up individual counseling.)

Suffering Continues

Although praising the services, employees said they still are suffering from being laid off.

“Losing a job is so different than quitting,” said Jo Lindahl, 55, a nurse from Garden Grove who had worked at the hospital for five years. “It happens so suddenly; it wasn’t your decision to leave. You feel such anger.”

Added Foisy: “I can’t replace those years; I can’t replace the friends I worked with.”

Explaining why the staff reacted so emotionally to the hospital’s closing, Diane Collins, 42, a nurse from Fullerton who had worked there for nine years, said: “I’ve worked in big and small hospitals. I like smaller ones like (Fullerton) better. I enjoyed the intimacy of knowing doctors and patients on a personal basis.”

The grief over losing jobs and friends was almost immediately compounded by the demands of finding other employment.

“Some were frightened that they wouldn’t be able to find another job,” Lindahl recalled. The 15 resumes she sent out resulted in 11 job interviews.

To keep employers from turning her down out of hand because of her age, Lindahl, 55, said she didn’t put that fact on her resume. “When I’d looked for jobs before, I’d put down my age and my marital status. I think it hurt me.”

Lindahl finally settled on a job at the Western Growers Assn. in Irvine reviewing medical insurance claims. She took a $7-an-hour pay cut.

The trauma of termination was cushioned somewhat by severance pay. It ranged from one to four weeks, depending on length of employment, said Kris Graves, 40, of Yorba Linda, the former business manager. Staffers also were paid for accrued sick leave and vacation days.

Some employees have had to rely on unemployment compensation, but they found that its top rate of $166 a week wasn’t enough to live on.

Many have taken temporary jobs to make ends meet. Lindahl went six weeks without a permanent paycheck, working temporarily at a convalescent home for two weeks.

Disappointments Told

The four who have found new jobs said it took them from one to six weeks to find permanent employment. Although relieved, they have been disappointed by their slashed salaries and lost fringe benefits. Many also have schedules they dislike or work for institutions they think are too big and impersonal.

“It was important for me to get a job right away,” said Sandy Colvin, 43, of Fullerton. The hospital’s former medical records director, who had worked there for nine years, explained that she is divorced and the sole support of herself and her 18-year-old son.

Colvin works for a Huntington Beach medical consulting firm. She visits nursing homes, dialysis centers and psychiatric facilties and reviews their medical records to determine if they are complying with state and federal regulations.

“I couldn’t hold out for a high salary because I have mortgage and car payments,” she said.

Added nurse Collins: “When the layoffs happened at Fullerton Community, you had to find a job quickly.” This placed her in a poor bargaining position.

Collins also was handicapped in her job search because she had been near the top of the hospital’s pay scale. In her new job at St. Jude Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton, Collins earns nearly $3 an hour less than the $11 an hour she earned at Fullerton.

Moreover, former hospital staffers have had to adapt to different working conditions in their new jobs. Collins, for example, had been able to work only three days a week at Fullerton because she found part-time work “suited family life.”

Works 12-Hour Shifts

Collins has two boys, 13 and 15, and her husband John, 43, operates a security guard business. However, Collins’ job at St. Jude requires her to work 12-hour shifts three days a week, a full-time schedule.

“I don’t like the 12-hour shifts at all,” Collins said. Another adjustment, she added, comes from working in a big, 350-bed hospital like St. Jude rather than a smaller hospital like Fullerton.

“The St. Jude nurses are nice, but I miss the close-knit feeling we had at Fullerton Community,” Collins said.

Joanne Lyon has opted to change careers. The 36-year-old Brea resident, who worked at the Fullerton hospital for 11 years as a secretary, has decided to return to college next month to prepare for a career as a social worker or teacher.

Lyon had no difficulty finding secretarial positions at other hospitals, and she said she felt that this was an opportune time to switch professions.

“Change brings sadness, but it also can bring growth,” Lyon said. “That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

Part-Time Job Sought

Lyon hopes she’ll be able to find part-time work by the time she returns to college next month.

Graves hasn’t been able to land a business office manager’s job. “There’s only one of these jobs in any hospital,” she said. Since Nov. 24, she has worked as a consultant at a hospital that temporarily needs her services because its regular business office manager is working on a special project.

Deborah Harrison lost not only her cook’s job but her home.

By the end of January, Harrison, 33, and her roommate, who has been incapacitated by cancer, must leave the house they have rented from the hospital for the past six years.

The three-bedroom California Tudor-style house adjoining the hospital grounds costs them $400 a month. It is one of three houses the hospital bought years ago to demolish as part of an expansion project that was not carried out. Instead, the houses were rented to employees.

Rentals Expensive

“I’m scared I won’t be able to find another place for me and my roommate to live,” Harrison said. “The two-bedroom places I’ve looked at would cost $2,500 to $3,000 to move into--what with first and last month (rental payments) and security deposit.

“The hospital’s let me go without paying rent since it closed, but I still don’t see how I’ll come up with this kind of money. My roommate can’t help out because she hasn’t been able to work for a year.”

Her fear of being turned out on the streets is one of many worries that have made for sleepless nights since Harrison lost “the best job I ever had.”

During her eight years at Fullerton Community, she had worked up to the post of dietary supervisor. She coordinated the work of the eight people who worked in the kitchen.

“I looked forward to going to work everyday,” Harrison said. “The people were great to work with. Everyone took pride in giving great care to the patients and making sure it was a quality hospital.”

Harrison was noted for making institutional food taste as if it were home-cooked. She acknowledged that her sunny disposition, derived largely from a “job well done,” has given way to weary foreboding in the wake of the problems that have engulfed her since the day when Woolf notified her and a dozen other supervisors that the hospital was closing.

“I felt like someone had told me a loved one had died,” Harrison said. “Since then, my life’s been filled with stress. Sometimes, I feel like I’m going to freak out.”

Harrison discovered that the $600 a month she received in state unemployment compensation was $300 less than it cost her to live on. “I had car payments, loan payments, food bills and premiums to pay on medical insurance I had to take out when my (hospital) group insurance ended last September,” she said.

In desperation, she sent out 20 resumes, scoured newspaper want ads looking for food service openings and spent three days every week showing up without interview appointments at hospitals, restaurants and hotels from Fullerton to Laguna Beach.

After six frantic weeks of pounding the pavement, Harrison was finally able to land a job as the food services supervisor of the nine-person kitchen staff of Beverly Manor Convalescent Hospital in Anaheim.

Had to Take Pay Cut

“I took a $500-a-month pay cut,” Harrison said. “It’s enough to pay my bills. But I’m not able to save anything so I can afford to move to another place.

“Come January, I don’t know what I’m going to do . . . I just don’t know.”

Foisy, although she has sent out nearly 20 applications, has received only three firm offers. “I’m looking for something, but so far I haven’t been able to find anything I like,” she said. The positions she has considered either don’t pay enough or are in hospitals she considers too large.

Unlike many of her former colleagues, Foisy feels no financial pressure to find a job quickly. Psychological forces are driving her.

“This is the first time I haven’t worked in more than 27 years,” Foisy said. “I don’t like being idle, so you can imagine that having all this time on my hands is getting on my nerves.”

She spends her days “very boringly,” she said.

“I’m cleaning everything I can in the house, knitting and working in my garden--even though I have a gardener. . . . I don’t like to visit people or shop, so I’d like to get back to work as soon as I can. I’m only 53. I’m not ready to throw in the towel.”