One of Bangor’s major health care providers may have to furlough up to a quarter of its staff if it can’t access the federal funding needed to pay them by the end of the week.
Penobscot Community Health Care relies on $5.6 million in federal funding from the Human Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, each year to make ends meet, Lori Dwyer, PCHC’s president and CEO, said.
Each week, PCHC accesses a piece of that funding in order to pay its employees, Dwyer said. Leadership was able to take out the money needed to issue paychecks this week, but when PCHC went into its account to prepare next week’s paychecks, the organization’s account said “pending review.”
“We’ve never seen that before,” Dwyer said. “My hope is this will be temporary and resolved, but we just don’t know.”
If forced to enact the furloughs, they would be the latest blow to PCHC, which has faced a series of losses and challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which left the health care system with a $4 million financial deficit to resolve.
PCHC had received notices from the Human Resources and Services Administration last week that the organization would need to comply with President Donald Trump’s recent slew of executive orders, Dwyer said, but received no notice that federal funding would be cut or stalled by the new administration.
“We assumed things were going to continue as normal,” Dwyer said. “We haven’t received an explanation.”
Without those funds, PCHC is roughly $600,000 short, Dwyer said.
If the health care organization can’t access that money to pay its employees before the end of the week, Dwyer said she’ll be forced to furlough up to 25 percent of PCHC’s roughly 850 employees.
If that happens, Dwyer said administrative positions that don’t directly “face” patients will be furloughed. This means patients could experience delays in reaching medical offices, but wouldn’t lose their providers.
“Our goal is to have the least impact possible on our staff and patients, and we very much hope this is temporary,” Dwyer said. “[The furloughs] would be painful for our staff, but patients wouldn’t necessarily experience this directly.”
If those furloughs happen, they’ll come roughly a month after the organization “structured,” which eliminated 31 positions. While many of those positions were already empty, Dwyer said 18 people were laid off.
Regardless, Dwyer said she’s hopeful the issue will be resolved soon and PCHC will be able to access the funding it needs before the week is over.
“I have some faith that our community is going to help us figure this out and help us through these challenging times and come together to help support health care infrastructure in this state right now,” Dwyer said.
The Human Resources and Services Administration and U.S. DHHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment to explain the inaccessible funds.
