(WSIL) -- Despite staying busy caring for patients concerned about the COVID-19 coronavirus some local health care providers can't keep all of their employees on the clock.
Some workers are Heartland Regional Medical Center are being furloughed. According to an email from Marketing Director Herby Voss:
Heartland Regional Medical Center is committed to meeting the health care needs of our community. Like hospitals across the country, we face unprecedented challenges and drastic volume declines as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. While we remain focused on preparing and caring for patients with COVID-19, it’s critical we conserve resources wherever possible. In addition to pausing all elective services, furloughs are an unfortunate but necessary step in this process. While we understand federal relief is coming to our industry, it will only cover a small percentage of the significant losses in volume and revenues our hospital continues to experience. We value our team members and deeply regret the personal impact this has on them. During this time, they will continue to receive benefits and accrue time off; they are also eligible to file for unemployment benefits. We look forward to welcoming them back when the pandemic subsides.
SIH is facing a similar challenge. Some departments are not operating at even 50 percent of normal capacity, and they've had thousands of appointment cancellations in recent weeks.
SIH is asking some employees to take an extra 40 hours off over the next two weeks.
“The decision to ask employees to take this time off was not made lightly, " said SIH Spokesperson Rosslind Rice.
Employees in many different types of roles are impacted from registration to research. Rice says it is hard to say how many staff members are impacted.
"...many hospital patient care departments routinely flex their staff up and down as their staffing needs change.  Also, there are a large number of employees involved in the Incident Command process," Rice said.Â
