Good morning. As a member of the Family Council for the Adult Care Center, I’d like to talk about the ACC’s HR issues, which continue to deteriorate their capacity to fill beds, to maintain an adequate level of quality of services, and to maintain revenue that meets their expenses. As the members of this committee know, at least half of the staff at the ACC are employed through temp agencies, as a consequence of the consultancy agreement with Infinitecare. Infinitecare financially benefits from the additional fees they receive through their staffing agency and has orchestrated the displacement of county employees towards temporary and nonunion positions over the past four years. Many of the ACC staff mistakenly believe that Infinitecare is the facility’s current owner and manager and that short term employment with a higher hourly wage and lack of benefits is in their own best interests rather than the many benefits that the county offers its employees. The presence of the temporary employees at the ACC creates continual chaos, as they can’t be trained properly or held accountable, as I’ve heard from the ACC’s Administrator.
Very recently, I learned that the county employed Director of Nursing has been replaced, perhaps temporarily, with the previous Director of Nursing who is employed through Infinitecare’s temp agency. The position was not advertised and is not listed as available. The only eligible list is several years old and only has one name on it, of a person who long ago refused the position. There is currently an Assistant Director of Nursing, county employed, and you would think that it would be normal for her to fill the gap, even temporarily, but that’s not what happened here. Instead, we have an Infinitecare loyalist in charge of roughly half the staff, who will prioritize the financial interests of a corporate entity rather than the wellbeing and safety of the residents.
The Adult Care Center operates under the same civil service requirements as any other department of the county government. Since when is an employee of a temp agency appointed to a management level position above county employees who are better qualified and available? This is also in defiance of Infinitecare’s contract, in Section 1.07, which states specifically that county employees are utilized first via the county’s civil service process and only agency employees sought when county employees are unavailable.
You all understand that since half of the ACC staff is medical, demoting a Director of Nursing who is well respected, experienced, knowledgeable and very likeable destabilizes the facility and breaches the trust of the residents. Employees treated like this can be traumatized, which impacts their entire lives and futures. Management level employees need the same kind of support as any other employee in order to retain them. Everybody makes mistakes. The permanent loss of every county employee costs the taxpayer thousands of dollars, potentially as much as 200% of their salary in separation and replacement costs, loss of institutional knowledge, productivity, macroeconomic and service losses. Perhaps the highest levels of management here at the county could benefit from some training about employee retention. Thank you.