St. Bernards Hospital makes pay/ hour cuts, furloughs

JONESBORO, Ark. St. Bernards healthcare has announced several new policies, including furloughs, cutting salary and hours for select employees, showing that no company is immune to struggles brought on by COVID-19.

“We’re not talking about individuals working in our covid-19 plan,” according to St. Bernards Media Relations Manager, Mitchell Nail. “A large number of these types of roles they might be in administrative with a pay cut. They might be related to an area that is no longer in operation, and so those are the types of positions we are referring to.”

Hospital CEO Chris Barber says patient volume at St. Bernards clinics have substantially declined, as well as the overall system, saying that they have seen a decline of 35- 70 percent.

Nail says they do not have a time frame as to how long these changes will last, hopefully only a few months.

Human resources is working with affected employees to make sure they get benefits.

While an exact number of employees who have received pay and or hour cuts is unknow, only about fifty employees have been furloughed.

“Right now, we are somewhere around fifty, and just to give you an idea of our size, these impacts are systemwide, but we have about 4,200 employees systemwide,” said Nail. “About 2,700 of those are at the medical center. About fifty of those systemwide employees are related to furlough specifically.”

Nail says some employees are voluntarily taking cuts and furloughs to prevent no layoffs.

NEA Baptist director of marketing ty jones says they do not have plans to furlough any employees.