SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — UC San Diego Health on Monday announced the elimination of 230 team member positions from across its clinics and hospitals.
The hospital released a statement saying “the decision was made solely in response to mounting financial pressures caused by federal impacts to health care, regulatory uncertainty, and rising costs of providing care combined with reimbursement rates from Medicare, Medicaid, and insurers that fail to keep pace with the true cost of care.”
The positions being eliminated include pharmacists, clinical social workers and clinical laboratory scientists working in the blood bank, according to the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), the union that represents some of the workers impacted by the layoffs.
“Many of these workers held critical, frontline roles that directly provided and supported patient care; positions that are already facing national shortages at a time when UC is grappling with a systemwide staffing crisis,” UPTE said.
UC San Diego Health claims “reductions in personnel are being experienced by health systems across the nation,” representing around 1.5% of the total workforce.
Those employees being laid off will receive all university benefits due to them through HR policies including transitional career support services, the hospital said.
The union is calling on UC San Diego Health to “immediately reinstate all laid-off workers and course correct as a public institution.”
