Byline: Michael Perrault News Staff Writer
St. Anthony Central Hospital is cutting administrative and support jobs and shifting other positions to funnel more money to bedside nurses and other patient-care jobs.
But the 500-bed Denver hospital, founded in 1892 to care for Colorado's gold rush settlers, has job openings for some 85 nurses, 52 technical specialists and 19 patient-support jobs - the most difficult positions to fill for hospitals across the metro area.
``We're still hiring,'' said hospital spokeswoman Bev Lilly, who declined to say how many non-patient-care jobs are being trimmed.
Like other hospitals in the Centura Health system, St. Anthony Central's costs for salaries and benefits have spiraled, in part because of high-cost temporary staffing resulting from the Denver area's chronic nursing shortage.
``Looking to the future and to stay proactive in the current health-care climate, we have made moderate reductions in staff,'' Lilly said.
``Because of the size of our (Centura Health's) health-care system, we have successfully transferred many of those staff members to other positions or other facilities, so this has resulted in affecting less than 25 staff members at St. Anthony Hospital.''
Centura, Colorado's largest health-care system with 10 hospitals and numerous senior and home-care hospices along the Front Range, saw its salary and benefits expenses jump more than 13 percent in fiscal 2001, with temporary staffing costs for nurses taking a significant toll.
In addition to 85 nurse vacancies at St. Anthony Central, Centura needs 100 nurses at Porter Adventist Hospital, 38 at St. Anthony North in Westminster, 34 at Littleton Adventist, and 126 at Penrose-St. Francis in Colorado Springs, according to job postings listed Friday on Centura's Web site.
Centura's St. Anthony hospitals also were hit with a 73 percent increase in charity care for the poor and uninsured during fiscal 2001 compared with a year earlier. System wide, Centura's hospitals tallied $113 million in unreimbursed care during the fiscal year, said Joseph Swedish, president and chief executive officer of Centura Health.
This year, Centura expects its pharmaceutical costs to increase an average of 16 percent and supply costs to increase about 5 percent, despite ``aggressive cost-control measures,'' Centura officials said.
In fiscal 2001, Centura posted nearly $1.1 billion in revenue, earning $141 million in net income and solidifying a financial turnaround from several years ago. But Centura remains aggressive about controlling operating costs, even as it invests $190 million to expand Littleton, Avista, St. Anthony North and St. Thomas More hospitals and to build a new hospital in Douglas County.
``We are facing sizable challenges in the future that will require a fiscally stable organization,'' Swedish said.
Executives from Colorado's hospitals, educators and government officials have come together in recent months to seek solutions to the growing nursing shortage. Initiatives such as the Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence aim to address a shortage for registered nurses that could reach 35,000 in Colorado by 2006, according to the Colorado Department of Labor.
Resolving the shortage will take more than merely pumping dollars into recruiting, said Robert Espinosa, a spokesman for the Service Employees Union in Colorado, which represents several thousand health-care workers.
``It's as much a retention issue,'' Espinosa said.
``With not enough staff and an inability to have a voice in health-care delivery, nurses are being frustrated and eventually exhausted, because they're working too much or there's too many accidents, and they're just leaving the profession.''
