Centura Health, which operates Longmont United Hospital in Longmont and Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville, has reduced its workforce by about 1% across Colorado and western Kansas, the health-care system announced Friday.

“We are working diligently to find alternate positions for those whose roles were eliminated, and eligible associates who are not transitioned to another position in our ministry will receive severance pay and other job support, including access to career transition services,” the company said in a news release.

“Centura Health maintains its focus on providing high-performing whole-person care to our communities, while anticipating and preparing for challenges today and in the future,” it said in the release. However, it added, “we are not immune to the economic challenges facing our country and our industry, including external factors such as inflation, supply-chain disruptions and a potential recession as well as those more specific to the health-care industry including labor shortages, changing utilization, and patients who are likely still delaying care due to the pandemic. In short, volumes are down and expenses are up.

“As these challenges ripple across the industry,” the company said, “we are taking meaningful steps to improve efficiencies and reduce costs without reducing clinical care. We have worked hard to avoid associate reductions; yet, like many health systems across the country, reductions have become unavoidable.

“We will continue to recruit and hire clinical caregivers, including nurses in direct patient-care roles, to deliver on our mission and vision of every community, every neighborhood and every life – whole and healthy.”