President Martha Baker, RN, to PHT Board: "We Must Fix the System"

President Martha Baker, RN, to PHT Board: "We Must Fix the System"

pht meeting march 9

At the March 9th PHT Board meeting, President Martha Baker, RN, told Jackson’s administrators that cutting employee salaries is not a solution to solving the public hospital system’s financial crisis.
“How dare you pick on your employees who have been holding up these walls when everything else is broken,” Baker told board members at the meeting, adding that employee pay cuts would only add up to about $10 million in savings for a system facing a $230 million deficit this year.

“We are not going to put money into a sieve,” Baker said.
This Friday, SEIU 1991 is bringing in a team of healthcare operations experts to work with Jackson’s administrators to assess the system’s financial state. “We are caregivers,” Baker said. “When someone is bleeding to death, we don’t do anything until we assess. We want to bring real solutions to the table for a system that’s failing.”