UW Medicine announced Monday it will move forward to furlough 4,000 unionized employees, in addition to the 1,500 professional and non-union classified staff that were announced last week.
The cuts address a $500 million shortfall caused by the dual hit of lost revenue because of canceled or postponed elective and non-urgent medical procedures and rising costs due to the fight against coronavirus, according to the medical center.
In a statement, Lisa Brandenburg, president of UW Hospitals and Clinics, called the move "a very difficult, but necessary, decision to address the financial challenges facing UW Medicine and all healthcare organizations responding to the COVID-19 pandemic."
The medical center made the announcement Monday after concluding impact bargaining with the affected unions.
“It hurts me that my colleagues are going to be not paid and out of work for months when all of these people were willing to put their lives on the line for patients during coronavirus,” said Justin Gifford, a neurosurgery physician assistant at Harborview Medical Center, a part of the UW Medicine system.
Gifford is not getting furloughed, but he is against this decision. He and some colleagues created a Twitter page to voice their opposition.
He says he thinks employees should have had more say.
"It just makes me sad. We make the working people as the buffer for our system,” he said.
UW executive leaders, directors and managers will be impacted as well. Depending on rank, hospital executives will take pay cuts ranging from 10% to 20% of their salaries, amounting to $76.5 million.
“I’m worried about the whole clinical enterprise,” said Dr. Alexander Adami, an internal medicine resident and treasurer of University of Washington Housestaff Association, a union that represents medical and dental trainees.
Adami works at Harborview and has worked in the ICU, taking care of COVID-19 positive patients.
“It’s very hard to practice medicine when you can’t really do much, you just sit around and wait for their bodies to recover. It’s been tough on every member of the care team for sure,” he said.
He is not getting furloughed either, but said that the workers who are are frontline workers as well, or those who support them. He also says training programs for physicians, like CPR certification or cardiac life support certification, have been put on hold for the time being.
He says UWHA is against the decision, and even though hospital executives are taking a significant salary cut, he believes the burden of getting the health care system out of the red shouldn’t be put on workers who make less money.
“Most of those cuts are more than some people’s salaries, which is disappointing given how hard the people being furloughed are working compared to folks working at home as administrators have been,” said Adami.
The temporary furloughs will last between one and eight weeks, according to the medical center.
UW Medicine includes Harborview Medical Center, the two University of Washington Medical Center campuses, UW Neighborhood Clinics, Faculty Practice Plan Services, UW Medicine shared services, and Airlift Northwest.