County Medical Center Will Lay Off 9 Nurses

After saying no medical staff would be laid off this year, officials at Ventura County Medical Center plan to demote two nurses and lay off nine others to cut costs.

“I understand it’s awful--very bad,” Darlene Betker, the hospital’s director of nursing, said Wednesday. “But, unfortunately, it’s necessary.”

The county hospital has offered to rehire the laid-off nurses if they agree to forgo their employee benefits.

A nurse at the hospital not affected by the layoffs predicted that the action will cause patient care to suffer.

“When you have fewer nurses to care for sicker patients, it only stands to reason that the level of patient care is going to go down,” said Judith Overmyer, a registered nurse.

She is also co-chief of the medical center’s chapter of the California Nurses Assn., the state’s 26,000-member nurses union. CNA officials have called a news conference for today to decry the layoffs and demotions.

Hospital officials dismissed the suggestion that patient care will suffer because of the layoffs. The hospital, nursing director Betker argued, will continue to comply with state-mandated standards as to the number of nurses required to take care of patients.

“There’s not going to be any unsafe patient care,” Betker said.

Overmyer predicted the nursing cuts at the county hospital would trigger similar layoffs at other area hospitals.

“When one hospital increases, decreases or augments,” she said, “other hospitals follow.”

During budget talks earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors pledged to continue the same level of support for the hospital, which receives about $6 million a year in county funding.

At the same time, administrators of the county Health Care Agency told the supervisors their only plans were to reduce overtime for nurses in preparation of an expected budget squeeze from indigent patients and stagnant levels of reimbursement from various government sources.

Health Care Agency Director Phillipp K. Wessels did not return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.

The supervisors were concerned that layoffs of medical staff might affect patient care.

Overmyer said the hospital’s nurses agreed to a 14% pay cut in the latest budget contract that amounted to $1 million.

She also said nurses at the county hospital earn less on average than nurses at other hospitals in Ventura County, although she could provide no specific numbers. In all, the Health Care Agency employs about 400 nurses, county officials said. Most of them work at the county hospital.

Although the county hospital handles most of the area’s indigent cases, Overmyer said many patients covered by private insurance also visit the hospital, especially for neo-natal and pediatric services.

The layoffs and demotions go into effect Aug. 29. Betker said each of the laid-off nurses has been offered “per-diem” jobs. It means they would continue to provide patient care at the facility, but they would not be eligible for employee benefits or guaranteed work hours.

“Everyone has been offered a per-diem job, and I’m doing everything I can to encourage them to take it because the salary is good,” Betker said. “What’s not good is no benefits.”

Six of those who received layoff notices are registered nurses and three are licensed vocational nurses, Betker said.

Two nursing specialists are being demoted to senior registered nurses, she said.

Jennifer Watson, a spokeswoman at CNA state headquarters in San Francisco, said the union represents 350 nurses at the county hospital.

She said the laid-off nurses would lose their membership in the local because, under the union’s contract with the hospital, per-diem employees are ineligible to join the bargaining unit.

“It sounds like union-busting to me,” Watson said.