Lower than anticipated funding from the NIH is slated as a primary reason, along with lease agreements on office space made in the past where the cost of rent compared to what prices would be today, are at premium cost. The hospital will see an increase with stimulus funds; however, not
enough to cover the entire tab.
The hospital though is not the lone star here as other hospitals have experienced some of the same, over the last few years, NIH funds have been pretty flat. Even the NIH agrees and is attempting to utilize and give out the grants on projects that had been approved but sat still due to lack of money in the budget. One other small item worth mentioning is the Madoff Scam that also had an effect.
Madoff Scam Hits Harvard Medical School Grants and affiliate Beth Israel Medical Center
You can always get personalized information and his point of view from Paul Levy’s Blog, Running a Hospital, the CEO of the hospital where he covers his offerings with transparency that we don’t seem to get anywhere else, and we all learn. When layoffs were imminent the entire hospital under his plan of involving all working together for a plan to keep the cuts down to a minimum, and officials and physicians have already taken salary cuts in order to keep some of the lower paid employees on the payroll. Those that mop floors and clean as well as delivering food are important too.
The commitment of the research department is still there, it just appears with a little less space and perhaps not as many individuals as in the past. BD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which laid off about 70 workers last month and made other cuts to regain its financial footing, is now taking other steps to stem a projected $28 million loss this year in its biomedical research operations.
The expected deficit is forcing the Harvard-affiliated Boston teaching hospital to give up lab space in two buildings and consolidate its research - focusing on cancer, molecular imaging, and vascular biology - at a single site.
Executives said in March that Beth Israel Deaconess was on track to lose $20 million for the year in its overall operations, which include clinical care, research, and other functions. At the time, they said reductions in payments from insurers, the government, and other sources would more than outweigh income from clinical care. In an e-mail to employees, Paul Levy, the chief executive, noted that "research funding has also fallen short by several million dollars."
But while executives say they wrestled with the problem internally, they have not publicly discussed the projected research gap.
Hospital researchers were alerted in March that Beth Israel Deaconess would abandon one of the seven floors it occupies in the Center for Life Sciences, connected by a bridge to the main hospital complex, as well as space in the nearby Harvard Institutes of Medicine research building.
Last fall, it relinquished research space in Cambridge and other locations in the Fenway neighborhood. In all, the hospital is reducing its research space by about 11 percent.
Research costs batter Beth Israel's budget - The Boston Globe
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