Northwell Health lays off 'under 4%' of IT staff

Northwell Health is laying off “under 4%” of its IT department workforce in an effort to reduce spending, a spokesperson for the health system said Friday.

New Hyde Park-based Northwell, the state’s largest health system and private employer, did not disclose the number of people affected by the layoffs, but said it was “less than 0.1%” of the company’s overall workforce.

“We made the difficult decision to eliminate a limited number of positions in the organization,” Barbara Osborn, deputy chief public relations officer for at Northwell said in a statement. “Decisions like this are never taken lightly.”

"In today’s economic and policy environment, we’ve taken a number of steps to manage resources responsibly — including reducing spending and pacing the timing of certain investments," the statement continued.

Northwell employs more than 100,000 people in New York and Connecticut.

The IT layoffs come on the heels of layoffs the company announced in November. 

Northwell then said it eliminated a "limited number of positions" from its facilities on Long Island, in New York City and Westchester as part of a plan to reduce spending, Newsday reported. The health system did not disclose how many people ware impacted, but said it was less than 1% of its workforce.

One in five people on Long Island are employed in the healthcare and social assistance sector, making it the Island’s biggest industry, said Shital Patel, principal economist at the New York State Department of Labor’s division of policy, strategy and research.

It’s also the Island’s biggest job growth engine, adding 42,852 jobs between 2014 and 2024, compared to overall private sector job growth of 62,895, Patel said.

Health care has been “the leading job generator over the past decade,” Patel said in an emailed statement Friday. “The aging of the baby boom generation has increased demand for health care services.”

But hospital systems broadly are facing lower revenue from federal Medicare and Medicaid insurance, said John August, the director of healthcare and partner programs at Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution.

Last year’s federal budget bill enacted sweeping cuts to Medicaid and changed who is eligible to receive Medicaid and Medicare benefits, programs that offered insurance for low-income families, older adults and those with disabilities. Those cuts risk curtailing hospital revenues, who will likely see more uninsured patients in need of care, August said Friday.

“A lot of systems are very concerned with seeing a reduction in government revenues, which for almost all hospitals makes up a substantial part of their revenue, especially in New York,” August said.

At the same time, hospital systems in New York face a shortage of healthcare providers, including nurses and physicians, August added.

Nurses at Huntington, Plainview and Syosset hospitals ratified new labor contracts with Northwell Health last month, avoiding a strike, Newsday reported. Those new agreements included pay increases.

Check back for updates on this developing story.