Replying to a message of Bob Klahn to Bob Ackley:

 BA>> I'm sitting there thinking "In a labor-intensive business,
 BA>> which hospitals are, in order to significantly cut costs
 BA>> you *have* to cut people."  I suppose that's
 BA>> a consequence of me having a degree in Hospital
 BA>> Administration and an ability to
 BA>> do critical thinking.

 BK>  IOW, you were overqualified for the job, so you had to go.

I've been academically overqualified for every job I've had since I left
the service.

 BA>> Then it occurred to me that each
 BA>> hospital involved in the merger
 BA>> had its own complete IT department, with nearly 100%
 BA>> overlap, which meant that nearly 50% of them were redundant
 BA>> and would have to be laid off; but they didn't

 BK>  With our IT dept I think 50% of them could be laid off, without
 BK>  any overlap. I believe our IT dept is like Dilberts, run by the
 BK>  "Preventer of Information Services".

 BA>> have to lay anyone off because so many of the Bergan people
 BA>> quit (1 out of 1 systems programmer - and the other outfit

 BK>  So, there was madness to their method. No need to lay you off,
 BK>  you're going to quit anyway.

Several of Bergan's people were refugees from Immanuel, all left shortly
after Alegent was invented.  One of them commented to me long before
the merger became public knowledge that "Nobody retires from Immanuel."

 BA>> Immanuel, the other major hospital involved in the merger,
 BA>> ran its computer room
 BA>> 24x7x365 with *four* people, two of which had to be there
 BA>> during the day shift M-F.

 BK>  We do the same with my dept. Only we have one person normally at  a
 BK> time. We have one trainee also.

Immanuel asked Bergan if any of our people would like to work an extra shift
or two a week in their computer room so their guys could have some time off
(the hospitals used the same hospital management software - from Shared
Medical Systems in Malvern, Pa).  For several months I worked one night a week
at Immanuel and Bergan paid me overtime for the hours, this about a year before
the merger; AFAIK Immanuel never did hire another body.  Since I worked 4 ten
hour shifts at Bergan (a bennie Alegent did away with upon my departure) I was
still only working a five day (but 48 hour) week.

 BK>  Our california plant did it for quite a while with two people.
 BK>  They couldn't find anyone qualified to hire, so they were
 BK>  practically begging us to go out there for maybe a month at a
 BK>  time so those guys could get some time off.

 BA>> Everything else they did was
 BA>> with absolute minimum staffing too, including patient care.

 BK>  People die under those kinda conditions.

An idea I shared with Sister Norita Cooney, former head of Mercy Midlands
(which owned Bergan and two other hospitals before the merger) and then
the chairman of Alegent's board of directors.  In just about that many words.
Something to the effect that "Alegent's mad cost-cutting efforts are going
to kill somebody someday."

--- FleetStreet 1.19+