GALVESTON — The University of Texas Medical Branch today begins notifying almost 3,000 faculty and staff members they no longer have jobs as the storm-battered institution sharply downsizes its main hospital.

If there’s a bright spot in the grim week ahead, it’s that the medical branch, the county’s most powerful economic engine, will dismiss only 2,800 to 3,000 people. University of Texas System regents last week authorized cutting up to 3,800 full-time equivalent positions.

The institution, which includes research centers, John Sealy Hospital, clinics and the state’s oldest medical school, employs about 12,500 people, 8,000 on the island campus.

The notifications, which will continue until Monday, end weeks of agonizing limbo for employees at the medical branch, which incurred about $710 million in expenses from Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm that struck Sept. 13, flooding campus buildings and severely damaging John Sealy Hospital.

But with them begins a period of intense uncertainty as leaders reshape the hospital from a 550-bed to a 200-bed operation.

Beginning today, all classified employees will receive 60 days’ notice with full pay and benefits.

Administrative and professional employees will receive a minimum of 60 days’ notice with full salary and benefits.

Nontenured faculty will receive six months notice with full salary and benefits.

Tenured and tenure-track faculty will receive notice with full salary and benefits through Aug. 31, the end of the fiscal year, officials said.

Layoff notifications will continue until Monday, ending with faculty positions.

The medical branch will staff two “Employee Help Centers,” one on the mainland and one on the island.

Because of the storm, the medical branch was losing about $40 million a month, in part by paying workers who have no place to work, regents said.

The medical branch has only $100 million in flood insurance and only about $160 million in unrestricted reserves.

Regents last week said allowing the medical branch to continue hemorrhaging cash would be irresponsible.

The UT System said Monday it would pay Atlanta-based Kurt Salmon Associates $285,000 to conduct a study meant to help medical branch leaders determine what clinical enterprise to offer after the layoffs.

The consulting firm would not assist in layoffs but would help shape clinical activities in Galveston and on the mainland, where the medical branch has a growing presence, UT System officials said. Medical branch President Dr. David Callender had said that while the institution had scrapped plans for a $250 million surgical tower on the island, it would move ahead with plans for a $61 million specialty medical center in League City to attract insured patients in the affluent North County.

The 110,000-square-foot facility on 35 acres near Interstate 45, FM 646 and the Victory Lakes subdivision would offer advanced imaging, pediatric and adult clinics, outpatient surgery and pediatric urgent care. While there were no immediate plans to build a hospital in League City, Callender has said such a facility might now be possible.

To some community leaders, hiring a consulting firm to define a “successful clinical model that includes a presence on the island” was a promising sign.

“I believe that the indication is that it’s possible to work with the system to rebuild the enterprise and to expand it from the current state of affairs to something much larger in the future,” said Harris L. “Shrub” Kempner, a member of the medical branch’s development committee.

Kurt Salmon is expected to report its findings and recommendations to the UT System Board of Regents by the end of January.