So Avera now is asking there employees to help pay for other people’s healthcare?
Fred Slunecka, Avera McKennan regional president, and other top managers will take a 6 percent pay cut. Other managers will take a 5 percent cut. Other employees will see a 4.75 percent reduction. Employees also will lose five days of paid vacation.
But doctors will have no paycut? How is that across the board? Sacrifice is sacrifice isn’t it? So the receptionists and janitors have to take a cut but not the highest paid employees? The doctors? Typical.
So far, the reductions do not include physicians,
Avera McKennan had a record number of patients this past year, according to Krebs. But accompanying that was a sharp increase in the number of people who sought treatment who were unable to pay for it.
How is this fair to the employees who work hard? I think it is a combination of increased needy patients and Avera trying to keep up with Sanford’s expansion and using the recession as an excuse.
“Our main project is the Avera Cancer Institute,” he said. “It’s a $90 million facility. It is still scheduled to open in fall of 2010.”
Funny, Munson mentioned on Inside Keloland Sunday that the Healthcare industry is doing great in Sioux Falls. Must not have gotten the memo. A hiring freeze and a paycut at one of the top hospitals in the state isn’t exactly ‘doing great’.