BHSH System cuts two dozen leadership positions at Spectrum Health Lakeland

BHSH System cuts two dozen leadership positions at Spectrum Health Lakeland
St. Joseph-based Lakeland Medical Center. (COURTESY FILE PHOTO)

ST. JOSEPH — BHSH Spectrum Health Lakeland has cut nearly two dozen leadership positions in Southwest Michigan. 

The jobs cuts come after Spectrum Health Lakeland recorded a $3.1 million operating loss through the first half of 2022, and the health system “like others around the nation” faces “significant financial pressures from historic inflation, rising pharmaceutical and labor costs, COVID 19, expiration of CARES Act funding and reimbursement not proportional with expenses.”

“While we have reduced our Lakeland leadership by nearly two dozen positions, we continue to actively recruit and grow our patient-facing team across the organization, hiring more than twenty team members each week,” according to a statement from Spectrum Health Lakeland. “We are grateful for the contributions and years of dedicated service provided by our impacted team members and are working to help them find new employment within our health system and elsewhere.”

Spectrum Health Lakeland includes the 180-bed Lakeland Medical Center in St. Joseph, the 64-bed Lakeland Niles Hospital, and Lakeland Hospital Watervliet that has 44 beds, plus several outpatient locations in Southwest Michigan.

The Herald Palladium in St. Joseph first reported the cuts this week.

Lakeland’s midyear operating loss came on $322.9 million in operating revenues in the first half and was aided by $6.4 million in state and federal pandemic relief aid that reversed the loss into $3.3 million in net operating income.

Another $78.6 million loss on investments drove Lakeland’s net loss even deeper to $70.1 million for the first half of 2022.

Across all business units, BHSH System recorded $63.5 million in net operating income for the first half on $6.58 billion in total operating revenue, which came on top of investment losses, as MiBiz reported last month.

BHSH’s Beaumont Health in Southeast Michigan recorded a $99.7 million midyear operating loss on $1.91 billion in total operating revenues. The $3.5 million in state and federal pandemic relief aid that Beaumont received reduced the net operating loss to $96.2 million.

In West Michigan, BHSH Spectrum Health generated $93.5 million in operating income that also came on $1.91 billion in total operating revenues. Spectrum Health got $46.1 million in state and federal aid to boost midyear net operating income to $139.7 million.

The operating losses at Beaumont and Lakeland are not unique. Hospitals and health systems in the U.S. recorded a negative 0.98 median margin for July, the seventh straight month of negative operating results, according to an monthly report in August by health care management consulting firm Kaufman, Hall and Associates LLC.