{"id":184652,"date":"2016-09-22T08:15:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T14:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=184652"},"modified":"2016-09-25T17:08:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T23:08:34","slug":"hours-after-learning-of-job-cuts-nmsu-medical-staff-saved-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/09\/hours-after-learning-of-job-cuts-nmsu-medical-staff-saved-a-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Hours after learning of job cuts, NMSU medical staff saved a life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mark

Darren Phillips \/ NMSU University Communications<\/p>

NMSU awarded Mark Milliorn, center, with the “A” Mountain Staff Award in 2011. The award recognizes one individual a year whose work inspires others. In July the university eliminated Milliorn’s\u00a0position as coordinator of the Language Learning Center, and he also survived a heart attack.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mark Milliorn was talking with a colleague at New Mexico State University on July 13 when he realized\u00a0the discomfort in his chest was not heartburn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Milliorn, who ran the campus Language Learning Center\u00a0and taught classes, had\u00a0been chomping on antacids for a couple of weeks.\u00a0He’d already downed several that day. Now he felt like a large woman wearing stilettos was standing on his chest.<\/p>\n

“Ray, we gotta go,” Milliorn remembers telling Ray Sadler, the\u00a0emeritus history professor with whom he was chatting.<\/p>\n

A couple of hours earlier, the dean’s office had called Milliorn. NMSU Chancellor Garrey Carruthers had announced the day before that 37 employees’ jobs were being cut<\/a> because of a budget shortfall. The employees hadn’t yet been named or notified. The dean wanted to meet with\u00a0Milliorn at 4:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

That meeting never happened.<\/p>\n

Millorn locked his office door and walked\u00a0out of Breland Hall. He remembers standing under the hot summer sun in the middle of the street. He wondered\u00a0if he should drive home to see his wife Karen, a retired surgeon. Instead he wandered across the street to NMSU’s Campus Health Center.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0doors were\u00a0locked. A doctor, nurse practitioner and two nurses were in the lobby chatting. They had learned earlier in the\u00a0day that NMSU was eliminating on-campus employee health services. Seven employees there\u00a0were losing\u00a0their jobs.<\/p>\n

It was about 1:10 p.m. The Campus Health Center was closed while employees took a\u00a0late lunch after meeting\u00a0with the provost to discuss the cuts.<\/p>\n

Milliorn remembers a woman telling him through the glass doors that the health center was\u00a0closed. He recalls mumbling something like “chest pain.” The staffers in the lobby opened the door.<\/p>\n

Then they saved his life.<\/p>\n

Milliorn\u00a0remembers health center staffers\u00a0taking his blood pressure, giving him oxygen, putting him on a gurney, pumping something into his blood through an IV, putting a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue to improve blood flow, and calling an\u00a0ambulance.<\/p>\n

“Within seconds of that nitro tablet dissolving under my tongue, the evil woman wearing a stiletto stepped off my chest,” Milliorn would later write in a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The day after his heart attack, Milliorn had\u00a0quintuple bypass surgery at Memorial Medical Center. Fifteen\u00a0days\u00a0later,\u00a0he would formally learn that his job\u00a0was\u00a0being eliminated to help NMSU plug a $12.1 million-dollar hole<\/a> in its budget.<\/p>\n

With the state facing a shortfall of several hundred million additional dollars<\/a> in the\u00a0current fiscal year and the governor taking tax increases off the table, more\u00a0cuts are likely for\u00a0NMSU and other government agencies funded by the state. Already, the Tourism Department has announced<\/a> it will close half the state’s visitor centers and eliminate\u00a0nine jobs in October.<\/p>\n

NMSU says it’s prepared for\u00a0additional cuts<\/a>\u00a0but, depending on how significant the university’s funding drops, it’s possible others could join Milliorn, the health center employees, and the others\u00a0whose jobs\u00a0were lost in July.<\/p>\n

‘Bemoaning our situation’<\/h3>\n

Nurse practitioner Kathryn Ray was one of the employees in the lobby of the Campus Health Center “bemoaning our situation” when Milliorn showed up on July 13.\u00a0Hours earlier Bernadette Montoya, the university’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, showed up unannounced\u00a0at the health center. One by one, Montoya\u00a0met with Ray\u00a0and six other employees\u00a0to\u00a0tell them they were losing their jobs.<\/p>\n

“They just showed up, they called us in, they gave us a letter,” Ray said.<\/p>\n

\"NMSU

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

NMSU’s Campus Health Center, whose staff saved Mark Milliorn’s life on July 13.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u00a0came as a surprise, Ray said. Though Carruthers had publicly discussed the possibility of ending on-campus employee health services<\/a>, Ray figured the health center\u00a0had survived the cuts because July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, had passed.<\/p>\n

NMSU’s administration made\u00a0promises, Ray said. The university was negotiating with Memorial Medical Center (MMC), a hospital\u00a0located near\u00a0the university’s golf course,\u00a0to take over operation of the\u00a0Campus Health Center, which also serves students.\u00a0MMC would offer jobs to all health center\u00a0employees being laid off, she said\u00a0they were told. In an interview with NMPolitics.net on July 12<\/a>, Carruthers\u00a0refused to publicly name MMC but\u00a0gave the same assurance that the provider NMSU was negotiating with would offer jobs to the laid-off health center employees.<\/p>\n

The negotiations with MMC, undertaken without letting other providers bid on the contract, were legal. The state’s Procurement Code allowed that as long as the contract increased access to health care. In his interview with NMPolitics.net, Carruthers touted the expanded evening and weekend hours the on-campus clinic would offer once the deal was finalized.<\/p>\n

But the deal was never\u00a0finalized. Negotiations fell apart<\/a>\u00a0after the student body president\u00a0took issue with the plan\u00a0to outsource student health services.<\/p>\n

Even before that, the negotiations were controversial.\u00a0Ray said\u00a0health center employees had\u00a0questions when they met\u00a0with Provost Dan Howard\u00a0during the lunch hour on July 13. Howard was on MMC’s Board of Trustees\u00a0at the time, and some raised questions about his role. Howard\u00a0told the employees he wasn’t involved in negotiations, Ray said.<\/p>\n

“If you haven\u2019t been in on negotiations and you can\u2019t tell us anything, why didn\u2019t they send someone that could tell us?” Ray recalls asking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very skeptical about the part that Memorial would have jobs for everyone,” Ray said. “I think we saw that for what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two days after health center employees raised concerns, Howard resigned from MMC’s board. “…because New Mexico State University and Memorial Medical Center will likely have a future business relationship, it is time that I resign my position to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest,” he wrote in his resignation letter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Negotiations ceased\u00a0about 10 days later.<\/p>\n

NMSU now plans to continue operating the Campus Health Center on its own, to serve\u00a0students only. There have been\u00a0some discussions with off-campus\u00a0clinics about providing easier access to NMSU employees, but no agreement has materialized. And university spokesman Justin Bannister said on Aug. 29 that a third-party\u00a0provider, who he didn’t name (but is MMC), “has reached out to some of the NMSU Campus Health Center\u00a0employees in eliminated positions” and would soon reach out to the rest. “We do not know how many\u00a0of the employees have been or will be offered positions as a result of this\u00a0outreach,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ray’s last day at NMSU was Aug. 15. She said MMC hasn’t\u00a0called to offer her a job.<\/p>\n

‘I had to accept it’<\/h3>\n

Milliorn was feeling pretty good by the time he was strapped to a gurney in the back of\u00a0an ambulance and headed to MMC on July 13. He started giggling. His brother, unaware of what was happening, texted Milliorn. He responded by sending a selfie. That photo, which Milliorn\u00a0took at 1:35 p.m., shows only his jeans and shoes, with straps holding his legs in place.<\/p>\n

\"Milliorn

Mark Milliorn<\/p>

Mark Milliorn took\u00a0this photo of his legs strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance on July 13.<\/p><\/div>\n

He recalls\u00a0some\u00a0details from\u00a0his stay in the hospital. People explaining things. Agreeing to requests from medical professionals. Trusting that his wife would handle the situation.<\/p>\n

But he also had hallucinations. “Lots of things in the room kept moving: there was a menagerie of furry animals, and people who weren’t actually there came to visit (Mary Wolf, frequently). At one point, I vividly saw Captain Morgan walk through the room,” he wrote in another\u00a0blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An hour after Milliorn took his selfie in the back of the ambulance, NMSU’s Board of Regents convened a public meeting<\/a> in an auditorium in Domenici Hall on campus.<\/p>\n

At the meeting, Carruthers announced publicly<\/a>\u00a0for the first time his plans to address the budget shortfall, including eliminating the dozens of jobs and on-campus employee health services.\u00a0NMSU says ending employee health services will save $665,500 a year.<\/p>\n

Milliorn went home from MMC on July 19. Ten\u00a0days later, while on medical leave, he says university officials\u00a0called\u00a0to tell\u00a0him that he was losing his job and to offer him a new position.<\/p>\n

“They’re pressuring me to agree to a job change on the phone,” Milliorn recalled in an interview. “I told them, I said guys, I’m not in any mental condition to do this. We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”<\/p>\n

He refused to talk and hung up the phone.<\/p>\n

The timing of that call, Bannister said, was influenced by\u00a0requests from NMPolitics.net and other media for a list of eliminated positions — information state law makes public. NMPolitics.net published that list on July 28<\/a>, but agreed to the university not including the position of one employee who hadn’t yet been notified his job was being cut\u00a0because of a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, inclusion in the article of the explanation for why one employee’s position wasn’t identified alerted Milliorn’s wife Karen and others who knew about his situation. So the university felt it needed to act, which is why officials called Milliorn the next day.<\/p>\n

“While we would have preferred to further delay the notification, the release by the media made that impossible,” Bannister said.<\/p>\n

Soon after ending the phone call, Milliorn\u00a0received a letter offering him a job as an NMSU admissions\u00a0adviser at\u00a0$41,000 a year, which he said is a 20 percent pay cut. According to the letter,\u00a0he had until Aug. 8\u00a0to decide.<\/p>\n

Milliorn, who has no experience working in admissions,\u00a0took the\u00a0job.<\/p>\n

“I had to accept it or I would have been terminated and I would have lost my health insurance,” he said.<\/p>\n

NMSU awarded Milliorn with the “A” Mountain Staff Award in 2011<\/a>. The award recognizes one employee\u00a0a year whose work inspires others. He had been\u00a0scheduled\u00a0to teach two sections of Spanish 364, The Culture of Latin America, this semester. Those courses are being taught by others.<\/p>\n

‘My whole identity’<\/h3>\n

Ray choked\u00a0up when asked how she’s adjusting to life after NMSU, where she worked for eight years.<\/p>\n

“My whole identity, I\u2019ve been a nurse practitioner for 44 years. It\u2019s my identity, and I love working at New Mexico State,” she said.<\/p>\n

She’s concerned about the Campus Health Center’s ability to provide the same level of care to students with a reduced staff. Even though the health center also used to serve\u00a0employees, most of its clients were students.<\/p>\n

Ray, 65, had planned to work another five years. There’s still a position at the Campus Health Center she said she might be able to eventually fill, but it’s currently frozen. She’s had conversations with other medical providers about working part-time but has not chosen to go back to work, at least yet.<\/p>\n

Ray can\u00a0collect Social Security and is taking a break from work until January. She and her husband are guardians to their 7-year-old granddaughter Danyell. Since she’s not working, Ray is\u00a0able to pick Danyell\u00a0up from school and spend more time with her.<\/p>\n

“Right now we live frugally, we have savings,” Ray said. “If in January we can\u2019t pay our bills, I\u2019ll go back to work.”<\/p>\n

‘The real tragedy’<\/h3>\n

Milliorn’s health is slowly improving. He is scheduled to start\u00a0his new job in October.<\/p>\n

“There have been a few setbacks, but I’m definitely getting better,” he said. “They say it takes months to recover, and I’m starting to believe them.”<\/p>\n

Milliorn is an NMSU alumnus. He’s taught more than 30 courses in three different academic departments at the university. He said he’s dismayed by what’s happening at NMSU and places a lot of blame on Carruthers’ administration.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of things that just don’t make sense anymore, and so many faculty members who I respect, that teach well, have either left or are in the process of leaving,” he said.<\/p>\n

The Campus Health Center had been a convenience for employees. Copays were $5. Wait times were short. An on-site pharmacy meant\u00a0employees could quickly see a doctor, get medication if needed, and get back to work.<\/p>\n

Milliorn used the center as his\u00a0primary method of receiving health care.<\/p>\n

“I could get a flu shot between classes, and how in the world that was not an asset for the university just mystifies the hell out of me,” he said. If the health center wasn’t bringing in enough money, Milliorn\u00a0believes the university could have raised copays without any protest.<\/p>\n

The medical professionals who saved Milliorn’s\u00a0life “did a remarkable job,” he said. Some of them no longer work for NMSU.<\/p>\n

“The real tragedy in all this is not me, but that we’ve lost such an incredible asset,” he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bannister said the university is “proud of the good work that our employee health clinic staff provided that day [to Milliorn] and every day.”<\/p>\n

Even though eliminating on-campus employee health services\u00a0“was an unavoidable consequence of the necessary budget cuts,” anyone with a medical emergency, including employees, “can come to the health center for aid,” Bannister\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

A prior version of this article incorrectly reported two dates related to NMSU formally notifying Milliorn that his job was being eliminated. The article has been updated\u00a0to correct the dates and clarify the timeline.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the story of a New Mexico State University employee who had a heart attack hours before he was scheduled to learn his job was being cut — and the campus medical staffers who, just after learning several of them would also lose their jobs, saved his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[196,125,117,133],"class_list":["post-184652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-budget","tag-education","tag-health-care","tag-nmsu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}