The state health director is asking health-care organizations to avoid recruiting staff from the struggling Landmark Medical Center.

Dr. David R. Gifford sent a memo to presidents and chief executive officers of hospitals, home health agencies, community health centers and nursing homes in Rhode Island asking them to refrain from recruitment at Landmark, a Woonsocket hospital that is in a financial crisis.

In an interview yesterday, Gifford called the memo a preventive measure, given the uncertainty about Landmark’s future and the efforts to keep it afloat. He said the hospital has experienced no unusual loss of employees nor any effort to raid its staff. “This is a hypothetical fear,” he said.

Hospital spokesman Bill Fischer welcomed Gifford’s action as a “proactive initiative” and said, “To date we haven’t seen the loss of any personnel that would affect our ability to deliver quality health care.”

Gifford said the decision to send the memo emerged from the court hearing on June 26 during which Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein appointed a special master to steer the hospital through its financial crisis. Gifford said he could not remember whether he was asked to write it or volunteered to do so, but recalled a general agreement that such a memo would be a good idea.

“In the course of the hearing with the judge, the issue was raised about the fact that the work force there and the patient population was an asset to the hospital. The cash flow is dependent on patients coming in and staff being able to provide the care,” he said. “I said I’d be willing to send a letter out.”

The memo, dated June 30, states: “A matter of intense focus for the special master and the Department of Health at this time is the avoidance of destabilization at Landmark, particularly the destabilization of the hospital’s work force. Active recruitment of Landmark’s medical staff and personnel by the state’s other health care providers would be counterproductive at this time. The Department of Health would appreciate your special sensitivity and assistance in this matter by refraining from any such recruitment activities.…”

Asked to comment on the memo, Michael J. Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, said: “This is not an order. It’s a request. Given what Landmark is up against, it doesn’t strike us as unreasonable. It’s pretty hard to stabilize yourself if your competition is lining up to recruit your workers.… It strikes us as a sensitive and appropriate request.”

Virginia M. Burke, president and chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Health Center Association, an organization of for-profit nursing homes, said she had not heard any complaints about the memo from her group’s members. With recent cutbacks in the state budget, she said, “Nursing homes are more likely to be laying off people than looking to hire people.”

“As a health care provider, I think it’s reasonable,” she said of Gifford’s memo. “If I worked at Landmark as a nurse, I might not like it.”

Alan Tavares, executive director of the Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care, said “nobody has said ‘boo’ ” about the memo among the agencies that belong to his group.

The reaction was similar among hospitals, said Edward J. Quinlan, president of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island. “I think everybody understands it’s a unique situation,” he said.

“There’s no evidence that people are leaving,” said Chris Callaci, staff representative for United Nurses and Allied Professionals, the union representing 500 workers at Landmark. “This is all about turning the hospital around, not closing it down.”

Callaci said he was also not aware of any special recruitment efforts at the hospital. Employees, however, are anxious about how changes at the hospital will affect retirement benefits, contract negotiations and pending arbitrations, and the union expects to meet this week with the special master, lawyer Jonathan N. Savage.

ffreyer@projo.com