HOSPITAL TO LAY OFF WORKERS CONTRACTOR TO TAKE OVER JOBS.

Byline: Naush Boghossian Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital will contract with a private physical therapy company, angering the existing staff of about 20 employees who face losing seniority, vacation and other accrued benefits.

The move is designed to increase therapy offered at the hospital, which has filed for bankruptcy and is undergoing a court-supervised reorganization.

``We're contracting with a company specializing in providing physical therapy. That's the speediest way to get back into the market and it's also a cost-effective way to do it quickly,'' hospital spokeswoman Andie Bogdan said Wednesday. ``It's part of the turnaround process, but it's also a significant process of meeting a demand in the community.''

Hospital administrators signed a three-year minimum contract Tuesday with Interstate Rehab, a physical therapy company with 250 employees that contracts its services to several area hospitals, including Granada Hills Community Hospital.

``Our goal is to reopen the outpatient therapy services closed in the past year and expand the program to get the patients that had to go out of the valley,'' said Jim Pietsch, president of Interstate Rehab.

Company officials will interview Newhall Memorial's current staff of 12 full-time employees and nine physical therapists on April 24 and 25.

``We will try to offer as many jobs as we can to people already here,'' Pietsch said. ``The goal is to keep people here who want to stay here.''

Employees who accept jobs with the contractor will lose their accrued vacation time, but retain medical benefits for three months.

Pietsch said his company will offer similar benefits and hourly wages as Newhall Memorial.

Those who are not hired by Interstate Rehab, and were hired for a lower salary or fewer hours than they currently have, will receive some form of severance from Newhall Memorial based largely on their completed years of service.

However, those hired at their current salary and hours who do not accept jobs with the contractor will not receive any severance.

The union representing the physical therapists has gotten involved, demanding that the hospital pay severance since it is technically laying off the employees.

``The employees are upset because the hospital is doing this without having given enough notice to them or us to negotiate with them,'' Ross said.

Seven of the employees who are members of the union will participate next week in meetings with union representatives and hospital officials to try to negotiate a severance package.

``We want to arrange some kind of compensation for accumulated benefits,'' said union representative Manae Ross. Nonunion employees will have no other choice than to accept what the hospital offers them.

Ever since the hospital shut down its outpatient rehabilitation department last year, it has been inundated with calls from residents wondering why they can't receive their physical or occupational therapy at Newhall Memorial.

Currently, the hospital provides physical, occupational or speech therapy in its acute care facility, but once patients are released from the hospital they must go elsewhere for outpatient services.

``We get calls daily with people asking, 'Why can't I get my rehabilitation therapy here?' '' said Paul Salomon, the hospital's chief operating officer. He said 70 percent of the people who needed rehabilitation had to leave the Santa Clarita Valley for the services.

And the hospital's committee of creditors - formed after Newhall Memorial filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy - identified rehabilitation medicine as a department that needed significant improvements, driving the hospital to look into companies they can contract with to offer those services.

In its long-term plans, the hospital intends to make further capital investments in the rehabilitation department if it takes off, expanding into pediatrics therapy, sports medicine, cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation.