March 27, 2013

Laundering and Medicaid: State Operations Have Incentive to Be Inefficient

Justin Katz

From the time she took a job with the State of Rhode Island in 1979 to 2011, Judith Andrade had worked her way up to regular pay of $37,091 as a laundry worker at Eleanor Slater Hospital. According to payroll data collected by the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity she actually took home $76,320 that fiscal year, with overtime pay. The year before, her total had been $79,283.

In an article on the Ocean State Current, yesterday, Suzanne Bates detailed the dozen nurses and psychiatrists at the hospital making over $100,000 in overtime alone. The experience of Judith Andrade shows that it isn’t just the nurses who offer personal care who are able to more than double their listed pay at the facility.

Continue reading on the Ocean State Current...

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what's better - paying a lot in overtime or hiring another person and paying twice the amount in retirement benefits?

Posted by: Tom at March 27, 2013 8:33 AM

Option 3: Providing necessary services to the unfortunate people in our community without siphoning tens of millions of dollars out of the economy every year.

Posted by: Justin Katz at March 27, 2013 8:37 AM

Option 4: Privatize! Especially if we're talking laundry here. At least the laundry service if not the whole hospital. There are hospitals and laundry service in the private sector don't you know.

Posted by: Max D at March 27, 2013 9:54 AM

This is the way of government. For years the Boston Globe has published a list of the highest paid cops. It is always a patroman in the $250,000 range. This is made possible by "work rules". If you work any portion of a detail, you are paid the entire amount.

Is that possible here, or are they really working 60 hour weeks? as mentioned above, frequently "overtime pay" is cheaper than another employee. Also mentioned is the probable economics of "privatization". By the by, that works out to an hourly rate of about $18.00 an hour, seems high for laundry work.

Posted by: Warrington Faust at March 27, 2013 10:27 AM

This is the way of government. For years the Boston Globe has published a list of the highest paid cops. It is always a patroman in the $250,000 range. This is made possible by "work rules". If you work any portion of a detail, you are paid the entire amount.

Is that possible here, or are they really working 60 hour weeks? as mentioned above, frequently "overtime pay" is cheaper than another employee. Also mentioned is the probable economics of "privatization". By the by, that works out to an hourly rate of about $18.00 an hour, seems high for laundry work.

Posted by: Warrington Faust at March 27, 2013 10:28 AM

The cops get a minimum for showing up on details because jobs cancel at the last minute or don't take the full 4 hours. If they're just working overtime contiguous to their regular shift it would be time and a half multiplied by the actual hours worked. It would be interesting to see if there are such minimums at the hospital and for what circumstances would they need them.

By the way, Projo did the same expose by town of the highest paid employees and the cops and firemen were always at the top. They were referred to as the 100K club.

Posted by: Max D at March 27, 2013 10:45 AM

False dichotomy, Tom. See Parkinson's Law - the amount of work expands to fill the time allowed for it. Unlimited overtime for extra work is like Parkinson's law on steroids - the incentives are all aligned in the wrong direction. Even if it did cost more to hire more people, there are also serious public perception problems to consider. Nurses and firemen should not be earning six figures simply because it erodes public trust and empathy between the public and private workforces.

Posted by: Dan at March 27, 2013 12:13 PM

"Option 4: Privatize!"

Gaack!!! Smelling salts!

--- RI's Public Union Leaders

/irony

Posted by: Monique at March 27, 2013 5:22 PM

Contracting for these services is the only answer. NOT like they've contracted for the child care placement, with "private" companies made up of former state workers who don't know how to do anything but spend as they please and come back with their hand out saying "we couldn't do it for the contract price, give us millions more".

Imagine all the jobs that could be created by contracting with private parties to run Eleanor Slater and the laundry.

Posted by: riborn at March 27, 2013 6:31 PM

Sigh. If only my parents hadn't guided me towards a career in technology... I could be making significantly more money doing laundry at the prison complex.

Posted by: mangeek at March 28, 2013 7:51 AM
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