Hospital in Van Nuys Scraps 100 Positions : Health care: Valley Presbyterian cites empty beds and falling Medicare and Medicaid payments. Among the jobs cut is that of chaplain.

Citing empty beds and lowered government payments for Medicare and Medicaid, Valley Presbyterian Hospital has eliminated about 100 positions in management and patient care over the last three weeks, including the directors of pharmacy, respiratory therapy, marketing, public relations and the office of the Presbyterian chaplain.

It marks the first time in the hospital’s 35-year existence that there will be no full-time chaplain’s office.

Hal Wurtzel, vice president for corporate development for the Van Nuys hospital, said last week that not all 100 people are out of work because some “have switched into other vacant positions in nursing and patient care.”

Valley Presbyterian, like other hospitals, has been hit by low occupancy. Nearly half the 362 beds in the hospital are vacant, Wurtzel said. In the San Fernando Valley, hospitals now have an average occupancy rate of 42%, said David Langness, a spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California.

Wurtzel also attributed the layoffs to reduced government reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid. “Federal and state payments have not kept pace with the actual costs of treating the patients,” Langness said.

Three out of five hospitals in California lost money last year, Langness said. Panorama Community Hospital, a 96-bed facility in the Valley, shut down more than a year ago. Encino Hospital and Tarzana Regional Medical Center merged in January, creating the third-largest hospital in the Valley but trimming jobs in the consolidation.

Valley Presbyterian’s cuts were initiated three weeks ago with little or no notice. The dozen administrators at the director level were all gone by last week, Wurtzel said. “Some had worked here 10 to 15 years,” Wurtzel said.

“We are reallocating some job functions,” he said. “For example, marketing is now lumped with planning since the two go hand-in-hand.”

The Rev. Christine Beitzel, who was working as chaplain in her first job as an ordained minister, said that she understood that her layoff was tied to financial considerations, but she was concerned about how well the hospital will do by using clergy volunteers from the outside.

“One of the appealing parts of Valley Presbyterian was that it had a full-time person for the nurture and spiritual healing of the patient,” Beitzel said. “There is no other ordained person on the staff to coordinate the chaplaincy. You just can’t pick reverends out of the Yellow Pages.”

The Rev. Robert Fernandez, the top executive for the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) regional office in Panorama City, said the denomination’s only connection to the hospital was a yearly $5,000 contribution to the chaplaincy. Neither he nor Wurtzel knew what year the hospital became independent of the denomination.

Fernandez said he will plan to meet with hospital representatives to confer on how the hospital plans to coordinate the work of volunteer ministers, priests and rabbis.