Coronavirus in Oklahoma: Integris temporarily closing Portland Avenue site; ER to stay open

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Integris Baptist Medical Center is temporarily closing most of its Portland Avenue campus and furloughing a number of employees systemwide as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create upheaval in the health care industry.

While Integris will close most of the Portland Avenue campus this week, the emergency room and a few limited outpatient services like radiology and ambulatory infusion will remain open, said Brooke Cayot, a spokeswoman for Integris. The Portland Avenue campus is what used to be known as Deaconess Hospital.

The actions announced late Wednesday are being taken as hospital officials seek to adjust to a 50% drop in revenues attributable to the mandatory postponement of elective and non-emergency surgeries, Cayot said.

Elective and non-emergency surgeries have been postponed since late March when Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order designed to preserve personal protective equipment and other scarce resources needed to meet a projected surge in COVID-19 cases.

Cayot said she expects the Portland Avenue campus to reopen either when that becomes necessary to meet the COVID-19 surge or when there is an increased need for it after elective and non-emergency surgeries have been reinstated.

The Portland Avenue campus has a bed capacity of 110, but the decline in patient count means that only 34 patients will have to be moved, she said. They will be transferred to the main Integris Baptist Medical Center campus along Northwest Expressway.

"The direct personal caregivers are being reassigned to the Baptist campus," Cayot said. "It's the non-direct patient care employees, for the most part, who will be considered for furlough just like all the other caregivers in our system right now."

Integris has a number of medical facilities throughout the state. Leaders in the system have been asked to review their personnel situations and institute furloughs to better align the number of working employees with the current patient load, she said.

Cayot said she doesn't yet know how many employees will be furloughed, because that is still being determined on a case by case basis. Furloughed employees will be notified over the next week. There are nearly 10,000 employees in the Integris system.

Leaders are being given great options in how they arrange the furloughs, she said.

As an example, Cayot said some employees might be furloughed until the surge hits, some might be furloughed every other week and some might be asked to work every other day or a certain number of fewer hours each week.

"It's not a reduction in force. It's really, truly a temporary reduction in hours" for some, she said. "We have to reduce it because our census is reduced."

Leaders have not been given specific targets for the number of employees who need to be furloughed nor the amount of money that needs to be saved, she said.

While the furloughs are without pay, employees can get full pay during their time off if they choose to use paid personal leave time, Cayot said.

"We've extended it to where they can go 80 hours in the hole" if employees use their accrued personal leave time, she said.

"And they get all their medical benefits," she said.

The only caveat to that is employees can get paid while on furlough with the understanding that they will come back and work when the COVID-19 surge hits and they may be reassigned to an area where they are most needed, Cayot said.

"Our vice presidents and above are taking a 20% pay decrease in their base pay," she said.

Integris also has temporarily suspended company matching contributions into employees' 401k/403b retirement accounts, she said.

"It's horrible. No one wants to get furloughed. I get that. But we truly are trying to make the best of a bad situation and that's why they are working so individually with each caregiver," she said.