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Contact:
Karolyn Raphael
Winger & Associates, Ltd.
312/494-0422
Karolyn@wingerandassociates.com
Sullivan, Cotter and Associates, Inc.'s Tim Cotter to Address Socially Just Compensation: Helping Our Working Poor Caregivers
(DETROIT, June 1, 2004) - Full-time employees of healthcare organizations frequently are unable to afford health insurance for those whom they support. Their compensation packages, moreover, do not even allow them to live above the poverty level. To make matters worse, there is often limited access to support systems and development opportunities in order to learn the skills needed to allow individuals to break this cycle of poverty. But there are more and more healthcare organizations, many of them Catholic sponsored, that do provide just, fair, and market scale compensation packages along with benefits of health insurance, dental insurance, and opportunities for education to advance and learn to break the cycle of poverty. On Tuesday, June 8 at 3:30 p.m. CDT at the 89th Catholic Health Assembly in Chicago, Tim Cotter, managing director of Sullivan, Cotter and Associates, Inc., together with Jeff Hamlin, system director, human resources services of CHRISTUS Health, will discuss this important issue and offer their insights to hospitals and health care systems.
The presentation will focus on:
The actions other healthcare organizations are taking in this area.
The use and misuse of available poverty and living wage statistics.
The experiences of large health systems which have recently developed and implemented programs to address the issue.
Suggested approaches to addressing the issue in the conference participants’ own organizations.
With nearly 1,100 attendees, the assembly is the largest annual gathering of Catholic health care leaders and is hosted by the Catholic Health Association of the United States. The assembly headquarters hotel is the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, 301 East North Water Street. Media interested in attending the session will need to register for credentials at the onsite Media Headquarters, Parlor D, located on the hotel lobby level.
PowerPoint slides from this presentation are available to the media upon request. Follow-up interviews with SullivanCotter’s, Tim Cotter can be arranged by calling Karolyn Raphael at 312/494-0422. A presentation summary is attached.
About SullivanCotter
SullivanCotter specializes in the development and implementation of strategic total compensation and reward programs for healthcare organizations and helps them with specific compensation needs. Since 1992, SullivanCotter’s innovative yet practical compensation solutions have created tremendous value for the organizations it serves. As a leader in benchmarking, trends and analyses, SullivanCotter has developed some of the top national compensation surveys in the United States. SullivanCotter has offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and Westport, Connecticut and New York City. For more information about SullivanCotter, visit www.sullivancotter.com or call 888/739-7039 toll-free.
About CHRISTUS Health
Sponsored jointly by the congregations of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in Houston and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, CHRISTUS Health employs more than 25,000 people with total assets of $3.4 billion. With a mission to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, CHRISTUS Health comprises more than 40 hospitals and long-term care facilities, as well as health care ministries in approximately 70 communities in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah, as well as Monterrey and Saltillo, Mexico. CHRISTUS Health is headquartered in the Greater Dallas Metropolitan area, with additional offices operating in both San Antonio and Houston to support the health system operations.
About the Catholic Health Association of the United States
The St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) is the national leadership organization of the Catholic health ministry, engaged in the strategic directions of mission, ethics, and advocacy. CHA's more than 2,000 members form the nation's largest group of not-for-profit health care sponsors, systems, facilities, health plans, and related organizations. For more information, visit the CHA website at www.chausa.org.
PRESENTATION SUMMARY:
Beginning with defining the poverty line, Cotter points out that many observers believe the poverty definitions understate basic income needs. “The goal is to break the cycle of poverty and have a lasting impact. There is no perfect solution and no perfect way to target the right people, but the most common approach is to establish a uniform minimum wage level,” Cotter noted.
Potential approaches include targeting those employees covering more persons than themselves with fully paid or highly subsidized child-care, fully paid or highly subsidized health and dental insurance. Other potential approaches include transportation assistance, uniform subsidy and funding for contributory retirement plans.
“Collaborating with other community resources such as foundations, schools, churches, and governmental agencies is a powerful tool for developing alternative means of remediation for employees,” notes Cotter. “From paid job training to financial literacy counseling, there is more than one way to do the right thing,” he adds.
Hamlin discusses the experience of CHRISTUS Health and its efforts with providing a just wage. First, CHRISTUS implemented a minimum wage to address the local costs of living and is now developing multi-year plans and budgets to initiate and/or expand programs to increase job and life skills as well as the earnings potential of the lowest-paid employees. CHRISTUS entities are also collaborating with other community resources in providing developmental assistance. “It is difficult to know what is the right thing to do, but it must not be the excuse to do nothing,” adds Hamlin.
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