Struggling against budget woes in the center of Michigan’s coronavirus crisis, Detroit Medical Center announced Wednesday it will furlough 480 employees.
In a written statement, CEO Audrey Gregory said the employees of the eight-hospital system “remain on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” but she noted that the state’s stay-at-home orders have forced some operations to be “temporarily closed or ramped down.”
Furloughs will not affect patient care, Gregory said: “We remain appropriately staffed to provide our full support to treat patients in greater Detroit.”
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DMC did not immediately respond to questions about details of the furloughs, including precisely what positions would be furloughed.
The furloughs appear to be indefinite.
“Our expectation is that we can return impacted staff to service once we navigate through this unprecedented time and our core business gets back to normal,” Gregory said.
DMC is the latest health system facing budget challenges in the face of state restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. Those restrictions ban elective or non-emergency procedures — the more profitable procedures on which hospitals rely to balance their bottom lines — so hospitals can have enough room and resources to handle a surge in COVID-19 patients. The cancellations also keep people without COVID-19 infections from possibly being exposed to the virus at hospitals also treating COVID-19 patients.
On Tuesday, Beaumont Health confirmed it would sideline one of its eight hospitals. Beaumont Hospital, Wayne, is now on standby “as a reserve COVID-19 hospital” and Beaumont staff is being shifted to other places in the health system while the hospital in Wayne is put on a temporary pause, said Beaumont spokesman Mark Geary.
Stories from the front
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