Brockton Neighborhood Health Center has laid off 65 people, citing funding concerns from lacking reimbursements and an uncertain future for Medicaid, rising health care costs, and strain from the closure of several local hospitals.
The layoffs accounted for about 10 percent of the center’s staff of about 680 people, chief executive Maria Celli said Thursday. Preserving patient-facing staff was a top priority, she said, and the eliminated positions were spread across nearly all of the center’s 12 departments.
The staff reduction, which took effect April 16, was driven by challenging business fundamentals, Celli said, with reimbursements from both commercial and government insurers significantly lagging behind the center’s rising costs of providing care.
Also adding to the center’s financial strain, Celli said: a series of recent disruptions to health care institutions in Brockton’s region, including the shuttering of Compass Medical clinical offices and Steward Health Care-owned Carney Hospital in Dorchester, the temporary closure of Brockton Hospital after a 2023 fire, and the temporary, but ongoing, closure of Norwood Hospital. More patients turned to the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center for care, Celli said, but that also raised costs.
“There were a number of ways in which we and others stepped in to help, but sometimes that also created some additional burden that was hard to sustain with funding challenges,” Celli said.
Advertisement
Congressional Republicans have also moved to cut federal spending on Medicaid, the country’s largest health insurance program serving roughly one in five Americans, from low-income families to people with disabilities. Those potentially looming cuts were a factor in the layoff decision, Celli said, heightening the need to bolster the center’s finances. About half of the center’s patients are Medicaid beneficiaries, she said, so Medicaid cuts would decimate the center’s budget and the communities it serves.
Advertisement
“That would really put us in the position to not be able to do the work that we want to do to keep our communities healthy,” Celli said. “It wasn’t reactive in advance of Medicaid being cut. We needed to strengthen our position now, but we’re also having to strengthen our position to withstand what might be coming.”
Brockton’s challenges reflect the troubles facing many community health clinics, said Michael Curry, chief executive of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.
“It is deeply troubling for a health center like Brockton to be in financial trouble,” Curry said.
Potential cuts to Medicaid would be “disastrous” to community health centers, Curry said, likely forcing many centers to make cuts to benefits for employees and services that are not reimbursed that support their communities. Roughly one in five Medicaid recipients in Massachusetts get their care at one of the state’s federally qualified health centers, like Brockton’s.
“That really makes us inextricably linked with what happens in the Medicaid program,” Curry said. “If there is a cut to the program ... those would lead to really hard decisions at community health centers beyond what you’re seeing now with Brockton.”
Community health centers are also grappling with the state’s growing health care workforce shortage, but without the same resources as larger hospital systems. When community health centers like Brockton try to hire doctors and nurses at competitive rates, they “struggle to make ends meet,” Celli said.
Advertisement
“We’re facing it just like other parts of the system,” Curry said. “The problem for community health centers is we’re sort of at the bottom of the totem pole with the crisis.”
Maren Halpin can be reached at maren.halpin@globe.com.
