My take on this is that this is the way that hospitals - like every other business in the US - is dealing with the Obamacare commandments: laying off current full-time staff who have benefits galore, including health insurance, who will be replaced with part-timers when this short-term drop in hospital receipts ends, part timers who will be working less than 30 hours a week - the hospitals will be hiring 1 1/2 part timers to replace every full timer who's been fired - and who will not get any health insurance benefits because they're working less than 30 hours a week. Not only that, but they won't be getting any of the retirement benefits the full timers are currently getting, either.
In other words, it's not a short-sighted response to a temporary recession, it's a rather shrewd use of the opportunities afforded by a temporary recession to engage in the wholesale replacement of full timers with part timers without endangering the running of the hospitals because the current staff needs are low enough that the hospitals can do without a significant number of their current employees while they hire and train their part time replacements.