Innovis Health restructuring eliminates 24 positions

Innovis Health in Fargo is trimming about 24 positions as part of a staffing realignment aimed at making the health provider more efficient and effective.

The reductions, announced Wednesday, are occurring across the hospital and clinic, but Innovis continues to recruit doctors and staff positions to meet needs, said Kris Olson, an Innovis vice president and spokeswoman.

“We do not have a hiring freeze on,” she said.

The eliminated positions, which include management positions, equal 1.3 percent of the 1,850 full-time equivalent employees.

The restructuring comes two years after the former Dakota Clinic and Innovis hospital merged, and then affiliated with Essentia Health, based in Duluth, Minn.

Eliminating targeted positions will help Innovis prepare itself strategically for the future, Olson said.

Innovis is financially healthy and recently added 18 beds, with plans still in the works for a third wing at some point, she said.

“That’s still on the horizon,” she said of a third wing to the hospital and clinic, which opened 10 years ago.

Innovis Health has 86 hospital beds and 21 locations in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, and 200 physicians and other providers.

In May 2008, Fargo MeritCare announced budget cuts that included eliminating 90 jobs, or almost 1.3 percent of 7,000 employees, and the loss of another 120 positions through attrition.

Since merging late last year with Sanford Health, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., MeritCare leaders repeatedly have said they are not laying off employees as they restructure, and have no plans to do so.

Some employees in support departments are being reassigned or having their job descriptions revised as a result of the merger, MeritCare representatives have said.

Innovis staff members whose jobs are cut are receiving severance packages based on their length of employment, Olson said.

Three years ago, Innovis eliminated about four positions through attrition, and occasionally pared “one or two positions,” but has not had a systemic restructuring in the seven years Olson has been with the organization.

Tags: daily updates, innovis health, fargo, health, medical, layoffs