UMC To Freeze Wages

University Medical Center employees will not be getting raises this fall in an effort to save the hospital an estimated $1.5 million. “Nobody likes to hear that even though they did a super job, I’m sorry, they’re not getting a raise,” said UMC spokeswoman Margaret Althoff-Olivas. “Nobody wants to hear that. So I’m not gonna tell you that our staff is happy.” The hospital district expects to receive about $66 million in the coming year from El Paso County property owners, and possibly more in the future. “This move won’t sustain us forever. We’ll get by this year, and maybe next year, but after that, something’s got to give,” Althoff-Olivas said. UMC has operated under the effective tax rate five of the last six years. The only time UMC deviated from this is when voters approved the Children’s Hospital bonds. Victims of the violence in Jurez and uninsured patients who have come to El Paso while fleeing it place further strains on the medical center’s budget. So far, UMC has provided care for 182 of these patients at a cost of more than $4 million, but has only been reimbursed for $1 million. UMC officials are quick to point out that 90 percent of those patients are U.S. citizens. Still, the cost of charity care of all kinds has doubled in the past four years. UMC officials project that the amount of charity care the hospital will provide this year will reach $193 million. That’s almost double the $99 million in charity care the hospital paid for in 2007. “El Pasoans are hurting,” Althoff-Olivas said. “And so if they lose their insurance or they drop it because they can no longer afford to have it, then they will turn to us for help when they become ill.” Reimbursements to help pay for this charity care are also declining. UMC officials said they were told that state and federal funds will drop by another $16 million next year as both governments deal with budget crises of their own. Medical inflation is also hitting UMC deep in its pocketbooks, as supply costs are expected to increase by 3.4 percent next year. “That’s something we have no control over,” Althoff-Olivas said. “We have to eat it.” El Paso County commissioners will approve UMC’s budget in late September.