Trinity Health in Livonia to lay off 557 employees starting in October, primarily in IT support

Trinity Health’s Livonia location will permanently lay off 557 employees, largely in its technology and information services division, the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity announced recently.

Layoffs are scheduled to begin Oct. 25 and continue through Nov. 29, according to a notice published by the department.

The layoffs come months after Trinity Health announced that it would be outsourcing its technology and information services work to an external partner in order to ensure financial stability and long-term sustainability and growth.

“The pace and complexity of health care technology are accelerating. Sustaining that pace is increasingly difficult for any single organization on its own,” Trinity said in a statement in June. “A partner whose core business is technology support gives us access to specialized expertise and innovation at the speed and scale health care now requires while strengthening service reliability.​”

At that time, Trinity said that the change would only impact roles that involve internal technology support services, and would not affect any clinical or patient-facing roles.

However, attorneys with Strauss Borrelli PLLC, a Chicago-based class action law firm, have launched an investigation into Trinity Health for potential violations of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires that disclosures of mass layoffs be made 60 days prior to the start of the layoffs. Trinity Health’s disclosure was filed with the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity on Sept. 4, while 60 days before the intended start of the layoffs would have been on Aug. 26.

“The WARN Act is a federal law that requires certain employers to notify their employees, in writing, at least 60 days before a plant closing or mass layoff takes effect,” a statement from the law firm said. “As a result, we believe Trinity Health employees may be entitled to 60 days of severance pay and benefits.”

A Trinity Health spokesperson told the Michigan Advance that the WARN notices were issued at least 60 days in advance.

The notification filed with the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity indicates that patient-facing roles will not be impacted in this set of layoffs. The job titles impacted by the layoff include service desk support staff, database administrators, network security analysts and applications engineers. 

The single position facing the most layoffs is “Service Desk Support I,” which will have 49 employees laid off.

The June announcement said that the transition to outsourcing those services was expected to be completed by the end of 2026.

Trinity Health, a Catholic, non-profit health system headquartered in Livonia that operates hospitals and other healthcare programs in 23 states, has said that government cuts to Medicare and Medicaid did impact the decision to restructure the health system’s technology support staff.

“Financial stewardship is part of every responsible decision we make and it is a factor. Like other not-for-profit health care systems, the financial pressures we are facing are real,” Trinity’s statement said in June. “We are managing significant reimbursement cuts, low reimbursement that does not cover the true cost of care, critical staffing shortages, and the rising cost of care for underinsured and uninsured patients.”

While the layoffs will not directly affect clinical staff, Michigan Nurses Association President Aaron McCormick noted that job cuts like these “have a way of spreading to nurses, whether that is eliminating nurses’ jobs or, more commonly, cutting other departments and shifting that burden to already overworked nurses.” 

The Michigan Nurses Association, the state’s largest nurses union, does not represent nurses at Trinity Livonia. 

“Nurses are increasingly concerned about the harmful impact of hospitals’ cost-cutting and we are skeptical about the industry’s need to ‘restructure’,” McCormick said. “When phlebotomists, respiratory therapists and others are eliminated, those responsibilities fall on nurses and take them away from providing nursing care and keeping patients safe. Outsourcing benefits the corporation’s bottom line – not the patients’ needs – and can often lead to unintended consequences. Time will tell what the rest of Trinity’s ‘restructuring’ brings.”