600 Cape Cod Healthcare Employees Furloughed Amid Coronavirus

BARNSTABLE, MA — Officials with Cape Cod Healthcare have furloughed 600 employees amid the new coronavirus pandemic. CEO Michael Lauf said the decision was unavoidable because the company lost 41 percent of its revenue and is projected to lose $74 million by the end of the fiscal year.

Lauf said the four-week furloughs will affect every position in the Cape Cod Healthcare network except for employees working on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis. The company will continue to pay benefits to its furloughed employees, and will reassess the needs of Cape Cod Hospital, Falmouth Hospital and other facilities after the initial furlough.

All executives and managers will also face salary reductions of 5 to 12.5 percent through Oct. 3. Lauf said his salary was cut by 12.5 percent, and he gave up his salary for April.

Lauf hoped this decision wouldn't be necessary. He said furloughs were delayed for the first eight weeks of the crisis and believed the hospitals would be out of the crisis by now.

"We truly hoped by May 4 we would be out of this crisis," Lauf said. "But that did not occur.

"Hospitals still don’t have clearance for elective surgeries [and other procedures]. We can no longer continue to do nothing in the face of mounting losses."

Lauf apologized to his employees in an email to staff members.

"On a personal note, I'm sorry it came to this," Lauf wrote. "We felt that by delaying this move for as long as possible, we could get beyond the crisis period. We simply could not as COVID-19 has continued to exist and persist in our community. "

As of Wednesday afternoon, Barnstable County has 997 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Lauf said the surge has not hit Cape Cod as severely as the organization's earlier models have predicted, which led to the closure of the field hospital at Joint Base Cape Cod after less than three weeks. The 94-bed facility never saw any COVID-19 patients, Lauf said.

But Lauf said it's unclear how the virus will affect summer tourism, a time when Cape Cod Hospitals become the busiest in the state. All furloughed staff will be kept and brought back once the demand is needed, again, a possibility Lauf acknowledged could happen by summer.