Cleveland’s three major hospitals — Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth System and University Hospitals Case Medical Center — generated headlines in late 2009 when they announced separately that they would create a total of more than 2,000 new jobs in Northeast Ohio in 2010.
So how did they do? Based on 2010 numbers provided by each of the health systems, MetroHealth came close. Cleveland Clinic … not so much. UH? That’s a little complicated.
First, let’s take a look at what each health system projected late last year:
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- Cleveland Clinic told the Plain Dealer it was looking to hire about 1,800 people across the country, with about 1,600 of those hires projected to come in Northeast Ohio.
- UH said in a December 2009 statement it planned to hire 500 workers, primarily physicians. Part of the hiring push came from UH’s anticipated opening of Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood in early 2011.
- MetroHealth said in December 2009 it had about 270 full- and part-time jobs posted. Metro should probably be cut the most slack relating to 2010 hiring, because it never explicitly said it planned to hire a certain number of workers.
- That comes to a projected total of 2,370.
Now, let’s look at how 2010’s reality matched up with 2009’s projections:
- Cleveland Clinic hired 720 people, citing the weak economy for the shortfall. “With ongoing economic challenges, we are committed to delivering the best care to our patients, and to minimize the effects of the economy on our workforce,” a spokeswoman said. It should also be noted that in November, the Clinic announced it would lay off about 200 workers in a bid to consolidate services.
- Here’s where things get a little complicated. UH was unable to provide an apples-to-apples comparison on its actuals compared to its projections. UH said by the end of the year it will have hired 464 to open Ahuja, but just 55 percent (about 265) were external hires. As a point of further clarification (or confusion), UH said it had filled 2,165 positions through November, with 65 percent of those (around 1,400) being external hires. The 1,400 figure includes the Ahuja hires. So did UH create 1,400 jobs? Not really. Much of that figure stems from employee turnover and does not represent jobs created by the hospital, according to UH. What’s it all mean? Essentially, we’re not going to get a simple and tidy number that’d tell us how closely UH hewed to its projection of hiring 500.
- MetroHealth said it made 231 “non-replacement” hires and laid off 40 workers in 2010.
Whatever the final numbers ended up being, it seems safe to say they fell short of 2,370. If there’s a bright side for job seekers, it’s that each of the hospitals has plenty of positions open — 1,200 at Cleveland Clinic, more than 900 at UH, and 245 at MetroHealth.
Plus, hospitals continue to be big jobs-generators across the state. Ohio hospitals employed 348,211 in 2008, the last year for which data is available, up nearly 5 percent from the prior year, according to the Ohio Hospital Association. Hospitals are expected to add more jobs than any other industry in Ohio through 2016, according to a report (pdf) from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS).
Broadly speaking, healthcare remains the strongest job-growing sector of Ohio’s economy, an ODJFS spokesman told the Associated Press last month. “The only area that maybe we feel is really robust right now is healthcare,” said Ben Johnson. “We’ve seen signs of a lot of healthcare hiring in recent months.”
Photo from flickr user heidigoseek
