This month, Auburn Memorial Hospital will finish a process begun in April: a staff reduction of 35 full-time equivalent employees, AMH administrator Brendan McGrath said in an interview Thursday.

These are the latest job cuts at the hospital. Close to 950 employees were on the payroll July 2005. The workforce was reduced to 728 this past July and is now down to 710.

Intensive measures - including layoffs - have been taken by AMH administrators to cut costs and increase efficiency after the hospital posted an $8.2 million loss over the course of two years.

Because two-thirds of AMH's budget is spent on labor and related benefits, that ends up being the main area of operational practices to examine, McGrath said.

The hospital continues a turnaround plan with a health care troubleshooting firm, Wellspring Partners Ltd., which was hired this spring.

“It's our biggest expense and our most important resource,” McGrath said. “We want to make sure we spend our money there wisely.”

The hospital has slowed filling vacant positions, leaving them open for employees whose current jobs are being cut, McGrath said.

He estimated half of the positions have been cut through attrition. Some employees have exercised their union seniority to bump into other jobs. And others have just been laid off.

McGrath said he couldn't promise layoffs wouldn't continue, but he said the pace would be slower than the last six months, which was much slower than the year before.

“It wouldn't be fair to say that today is absolutely the end,” McGrath said. “The positions we identified, we're just about finished going through.”

More than a year ago, management positions, among others, were the ones under the knife.

Most recently, the positions being cut were based on the volume of procedures and the number of patients in the hospital, McGrath said.

Some nursing positions were cut because some units were sending employees home or floating them as the average patient length of stay decreases, McGrath said.

Positions were also cut from the housekeeping, pharmacy, dietary and material management departments.

The material management department is responsible for purchasing supplies and dispersing them to the hospital's units.

McGrath was comfortable promising that patient care is not compromised by the staffing cuts, and that the reductions were part of a larger goal of righting the hospital's finances.

“The issue of trying to find the efficient level of staffing for health care is not a new issue,” McGrath said.

“We've done these things as there is more of a shift to outpatient care. These adjustments are not only inevitable, they are truly the right thing to do.#”

Union officials did not return calls for comment Thursday.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net