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The consequences of the federal health-care bill collided with the Gulf Coast in the form of layoffs at one of the region's most respected hospice centers.
The job cuts, 24 out of about 800 employees at Sarasota-based Tidewell Hospice, might be just mere percentage points of the total staff. But 24 more people unemployed because of government action resonates.
Indeed, it puts a local face on the national barrage of negative corporate news from companies with serious and legitimate gripes about the government's health care overreach. (See McDonald's, Verizon and Caterpillar, to name a few.)
Tidewell spokesman David Glaser says the layoffs are a financial statement, not a political one: Obamacare slices Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements by 2013. “It was forward thinking on our part to be responsive in an intelligent way,” says Glaser. “It also allows us to provide the same type of quality care.”
Hospice industry officials project the Medicare and Medicaid cuts for hospice providers nationwide will be less than 1%. Still, any cuts in Medicare and Medicaid at Tidewell would be deep because 93% of its revenues come from the government programs, Glaser tells Coffee Talk. The agency provides care to people with advanced illnesses and their families in Charlotte, DeSoto, Manatee and Sarasota counties.
Glaser says Tidewell, which has grown from less than 200 employees to more than 800 during the past decade, has never had to lay off employees for financial reasons. The employees were roughly split evenly between administrative and patient care.
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