Steward Health Care System eliminated the security staff at four of its Massachusetts hospitals earlier this month, outsourcing about 50 jobs to a New Jersey-based contractor with connections to Steward’s parent company. The hospital guards, several of whom had been on staff for more than 20 years, trained some of the workers who replaced them under the new company.
Most of the Steward guards at Quincy Medical Center, Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, and Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River were told they could reapply for a job with the new contractor, APG Security. Many declined to do so because it meant taking a pay cut of as much as $10 an hour, according to several former guards.
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Big contributors to the party looking out for the middle class!
Patients and staff in their ERs should feel real safe protected by minimum wage mall cops.
I am sure we will see a lot more of this. Cerberus needs to extract profit from these hospitals. This is what you should expect when you have a healthcare system run by a viscous Wall Street hedge fund. Thanks you so much Martha for allowing Cerberus to establish itself in MA healthcare and metastasize. I hope the campaign contributions are worth it.
I agree. I work in residential treatment with adolescents. Sometimes we've had clients mentally destabilize and require hospitalization with the first stop being Norwood Hospital. I've sat in the psychiatric ER hallway there with my clients and witnessed some other really dangerous-acting patients in the process.
Good luck covering those high needs people with poorly trained mall cops indeed.
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Given Cerebrus's position on guns I hope that none of the security guards are armed. Can the Globe find out?
Wow, a lead story in the business section of the Globe - that appeared in the Fall River Herald News fourteen days ago!
The Globe is really on the ball with this one.
Agree. State Street lays off 600 people and gets a couple of paragraphs. Must be humiliating to be scooped by the Fall River Herald
Ah, Cerberus, the three headed dog guarding the gates of the underworld. And Cerberus says it’s not in the securities business – if Cerberus’s mouth is moving, it’s devouring another victim.
Ask this woman if she thinks Holy Family Hospital, or Steward Health Care, provides "World Class Healthcare."
They left her in a recovery room, unmonitored, knowing she had sleep apnea. After a routine knee surgery, she choked to death without anyone in the hospital even knowing what was happening in her room.
www.helenbousquet.com
World class, yeah right. No hospital should be owned by a private equity company. The same company that owns Steward Health Care System...owns the gun manufacturing company that actually created the gun used in the Newtown shootings.
They make the guns, then treat the wounds.