Harborside Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is a name that many of you may not have heard of. For those of you who are not familiar with the organization here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “The facility was originally built in the 1960’s as a hotel and was converted to a nursing facility in the early 1970’s. The facility operated as Seton Hill Manor Nursing Home prior to 1996 when it was purchased by Ravenwood Healthcare, Inc., a non-profit corporation. Harborside is one of the largest facilities in Maryland providing care to residents with complex care needs. The facility established the first special care unit in Maryland, and among the first in the United States dedicated to serving residents with HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDs) and other communicable diseases and continues to provide such care today.”

The facility has cut back on 71 workers last week in a bid that is designed to help trim costs. This move, which occurred on the 25^th of this month, has had a great deal of detail released. There is, for the current moment, not a lot in the way of details released. There is no word on which workers were cut and whether or not patient care will be impacted.

What we do know is that these kinds of layoffs qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” Under the terms of a mass layoff action the company must give several weeks of advance notice in order to give workers, and the community at large, time to prepare for the loss of income. So the workers did have some time to prepare before they were laid off.

Of course in the current economy this is not the only health care provider to feel the pinch. For those of you who missed out on some of our earlier coverage here is a look at our coverage of recent job cuts at Saint Thomas Health, “In this case the mass layoff will mean the loss of 150 jobs from the company, at two different locations. The bulk of the cuts, and the guaranteed mass layoff action will occur at Saint Thomas Hospital. That facility is taking about two-thirds of the cuts. The other facility, Baptist Hospital, will lose only about one-third of the 150 workers, making its status a mass layoff questionable for the time being. It is also possible that some of the jobs may be able to be cut through attrition.”