There is an editorial in yesterday's Modern Healthcare
magazine, "Raising the Minimum Wage will Help Improve Healthcare Productivity.” This
is an area where I agree that the $7.25 minimum wage rate is
unacceptable. Quite frankly, a fast food worker making minimum wage
is appropriate since it is a job that was designed to cater to high school and
college kids; it was never meant to be a career. In healthcare, the
work is far more demanding than "do you want fries with that burger."
As Merrill Goozner, the editor of Modern Healthcare, writes,
"wages in these (health care) occupations are extremely low and are
expected to remain so." Having an average wage for such
employees as Goozner writes of $9.50 is ridiculously low. At WMHS,
our starting wage rate for an entry-level service employee is $9.55 per hour,
remember that's starting wage rate not the average. We made a
commitment to a socially just wage when we were part of Ascension Health and
have remained committed to it.
Goozner continues, "one thing that when healthcare
employers are faced with a rising wage tab, they look for ways to improve
productivity to offset their increased labor costs." He's
right. At WMHS, we performed a labor and supply analysis during FY
'12 generating an annual savings of over $8 million. That savings
positioned us to give a bonus last May to all of our employees and to provide
$2.5 million in wage increases this fiscal year.
A socially just wage rate is long overdue in hospitals
especially as these lowered skilled jobs become the fast growing occupations in
health care.
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