Intermountain Healthcare to outsource 98 information technology employees

Intermountain Healthcare to outsource 98 information technology employees

(Spenser Heaps, KSL, File)


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SALT LAKE CITY — Ninety-eight Intermountain Healthcare information technology employees will be outsourced to a company called DXC Technology beginning in June, the hospital system announced Wednesday.

The change will take effect June 3. Intermountain said in a release that "no Utah jobs are being lost."

"All affected employees will receive a job offer from DXC with a continuation of employment for at least a year," the organization said in the announcement.

Asked for clarification on what may happen to outsourced employees after a year, DXC spokesman Rich Adamonis said "the ongoing opportunities (will be) based on the client demand," though he declined to go into further detail.

"We look forward to welcoming the employees to DXC," Adamonis said.

Posed the same question, Intermountain spokesman Daron Cowley deferred to DXC for any comment.

Cowley said affected employees switching to DXC will transfer with a 10 percent raise in pay and will stay "working in the same office they are currently in."

"This change is about accelerating adoption of new computer technologies to help physicians and other clinicians continue to provide high-quality care for patients," Cowley said in an email to the Deseret News.

A large number of employees who accept the move "will continue to work on Intermountain projects, but some will do work for other DXC clients," according to Intermountain's release. Employees who do not want to make the switch will be assisted by Intermountain in finding employment elsewhere via a job placement agency.

Another 260 Intermountain IT jobs will not be affected, the organization said.

"The IT employees affected … work in areas such as computer support (phone technicians who assist other employees), internet access and system administration," the release said. "IT areas not affected by the change who will remain employed by Intermountain include those working in cybersecurity, on-site support, TeleHealth and the Intermountain data center."

DXC Technology is a Virginia-based company that employs more than 150,000 people in 70 countries. It touts itself on its website as "the world's leading independent, end-to-end IT services company" that serves approximately 6,000 clients.

"As a health care provider that is not in the business of developing IT solutions, Intermountain has found it makes sense to partner with highly efficient and effective companies such as DXC to perform certain IT tasks," said Marc Probst, Intermountain's chief information officer, in a statement.

Cowley declined to go into detail when asked how much money the move could potentially save Intermountain.

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The change comes as Intermountain continues to undergo a systemwide restructuring that dissolved some regional administrators' positions late last year and will move 2,300 billing and scheduling employees to a company called R1 RCM next month.

Asked in an October meeting with the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards whether information technology support jobs could be affected by the larger restructuring plan, Intermountain CEO Marc Harrison acknowledged it was a possibility.

"We'll see. There's nothing that is already decided in terms of those services," Harrison said at the time.

Wednesday's move represents the last round of outsourcing as part of the restructuring, according to Intermountain.

"This is the last new or expanded partnership arrangement — like R1 and DXC — we will consider in the foreseeable future," the organization said in its release.

Still, the full extent of jobs that may be affected in other areas of Intermountain as part of the overall restructuring remains unclear.

"We've completed the initial designs for 31 of 43 functional areas," Cowley told the Deseret News, referring to work groups Intermountain has designated to look at how to cut costs and be more efficient within their spheres of responsibility.

Employees belonging to groups that have finished their restructured designs make up 93 percent of Intermountain's employees, according to Cowley.

"We are on track to complete 40 of 43 functional areas by the end of April," he said, noting those groups encompass 99 percent of employees.

Cowley said the fluid nature of the larger restructuring — in which some affected employees may be given different roles elsewhere in the organization, for example — make it difficult to precisely estimate how many workers will ultimately be displaced from working for Intermountain entirely. Most of the affected jobs are leadership positions, he said.

"Intermountain is working with displaced employees to try to find them other positions within Intermountain. We're flattening the layers of leadership, so most of the positions that have been eliminated are leadership roles," Cowley said. "There will be minimal impact to front‐line employees."

"Because this is an ongoing process, at this time we can't provide a specific number regarding how many employees we will not be able to place within the organization."

Harrison told the Deseret News earlier this month that, while he couldn't pinpoint an exact number of employees who would be displaced from the organization, that number would constitute "an extremely small percentage of our overall workforce."

Intermountain runs 22 hospitals and 185 clinics and is Utah's largest employer with about 37,000 workers.

The Deseret News recently spoke with 15 current and former Intermountain employees, including one former executive, who each described low morale within the organization amid the restructuring and contended the multiple changes affecting jobs were uncalled for considering the organization's relative success.

Harrison said in response to those conversations that Intermountain has gone to great lengths to make changes compassionately by preserving jobs wherever possible, something he called "just the right thing to do." He also sai, however, he recognizes the changes have been "very big for each of the people who's affected."

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