Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital Cast Overwhelming Yes Vote to Authorize Strike In Fight for Safer Staffing and Safer Patient Care Against Dallas-Based Tenet Healthcare

WORCESTER, Mass., Feb. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 

• While nurses and patients suffer, for-profit Tenet Healthcare has used furloughs and staffing cuts, along with nearly $3 billion dollars in taxpayer funded CARES Act funding to boost its profits for shareholders and "improve its cash position."  Today, as the nurses voted to authorize a strike over the corporations' refusal to provide the staffing and resources to ensure safe patient care, the corporation announced a profit of $414 million

The 800 registered nurses at St. Vincent Hospital, who are negotiating a new contract with Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, cast an overwhelming vote tonight (Feb. 10) authorizing their negotiating committee to call for a strike should Tenet management continue to refuse to heed nurses' call to increase staffing levels to better protect their patients during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and beyond.  The vote comes as the parties are scheduled to resume talks with a federal mediator tomorrow, Feb. 11 where nurses hope Tenet will finally agree to work with them to address their patient safety concerns.

"With this vote, our members are sending a powerful message to Tenet Healthcare that we will do whatever it takes to protect our patients and our community in the face of their blatant disrespect and corporate greed," said Marlena Pellegrino, RN, a frontline nurse at the hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). "As nurses, we are legally and morally obligated to advocate for our patients to ensure they are safe and receive the care they deserve. We have tried for months to convince our administration and the Tenet corporation to provide us with the resources we need to keep the public safe, yet they only make things worse.  While our goal is to avert a strike, should Tenet maintain its obstinance at the table, we will be compelled to take that step because our patients' lives are on the line."

The vote was scheduled after Tenet issued what it called its "last, best and final" offer at negotiations on Jan 28, an offer which once again, failed to include any proposal to address the hospital's longstanding staffing/patient safety crisis.  Nurses were outraged that Tenet chose to draw its line in the sand, just days before Tenet's stock price rose to its highest level in months, a significant increase in shareholder profitability during the pandemic (from $31 on Feb 1, 2020 to close to $49 on Feb. 1 2021).  Now, on the same day of the vote, Tenet announced 2020 profits of $414 million, as nurses report their patients in Worcester are experiencing a dramatic increase in patient falls, an increase in patient's suffering from preventable bed sores, dangerous delays in patients receiving needed medications and other treatments – all due to lack of appropriate staffing, excessive patient assignments, and cuts to valuable support staff. 

Background on Staffing Crisis

For months, nurses have been struggling to care for patients without appropriate staffing levels, adequate personal protective equipment, and in the wake of furloughs and daily staff reductions that have left them unable to provide the care and attention patients, particularly desperately ill COVID-19 infected patients require. 

The nurses' concerns have been documented in real time as nurses have filed more than 500 reports to management citing staffing and patient care conditions that they believed threatened the safety of their patients. This includes 76 such reports in the month of January alone, more than two a day.  Nurses also have sent personal emails to management and confronted the hospitals' recalcitrant CEO with their concerns on her visits to hospital units. 

Other efforts to move to Tenet to improve care include:

• Last February, more than 70 percent of nurses signed and delivered a petition to Tenet administration calling for safer staffing levels and an end to management's punitive treatment of nurses, and this was before the onset of the pandemic.
• In March, again, prior to the first surge in the pandemic, more than 200 nurses from every unit and every shift attended a negotiation session with management to provide alarming personal testimony about the impact current staffing levels were having on patient care, with numerous nurses describing conditions at the hospital as a "travesty…disgraceful...and shameful." They described numerous patient falls, the onset of serious preventable complications, suicidal patients being left without one-on-one monitoring, and even preventable deaths directly attributable to inadequate staffing levels and unsafe nurse patient assignments.
• In May, after management implemented a furlough of staff, and daily staffing cuts (a process referred to as flexing staff) and other negative staffing practices, the nurses cast an overwhelming vote of "no confidence" in hospital CEO Carolyn Jackson and her management team. No action was taken to address the concerns.
• During the last 10 months alone, as a result of these conditions, more than 100 nurses have left the facility for other hospitals, specifically UMass Memorial, with better staffing, pay and benefits.
• In December, more than 400 nurses participated in an informational picket to call for public support for safer staffing, particularly in light of the growing second surge of the pandemic.
• And starting in January, dozens of nurses have been participating in daily picketing in an effort to move Tenet to address our number one concern – safe staffing.

Still, management has done little or nothing to address nurses' concerns.  In fact, as nurses prepared for the second surge, the hospital refused to put in place standards of care, such as the creation of COVID specific units with strict limits on nurses' patient assignments to no more than three patients that were in place during the first surge.  Now, to the shock and dismay of the nurses, the hospital is insisting on comingling COVID and non COVID patients; and creating conditions that force nurses to take up to five patients at one time – a reckless practice that endangers both patients and nurses.  They have also laid off secretaries and other support staff, thus exacerbating an already dangerous practice environment.  When the nurses finally convinced management to meet with them to hear their concerns and recommendations, the chief nursing officer abruptly ended the meeting, refusing to address any of the issues raised.

"Our nurses have been sacrificing for our patients, family and communities throughout this pandemic," said Dominique Muldoon, a nurse who worked on the COVID floor during the first surge and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit.  "Nurses have moved out of their homes or isolated from loved ones. Our members have been exposed or infected with this virus in our efforts to provide care to these very sick patients.  Our members have witnessed unbearable suffering and been the only ones with patients, or been the conduit of all communication with families as they watched their loved ones die.  For nurses, this is our duty and our obligation, and all that we ask is to be treated with respect and to be given the resources to perform this noble work."

Staffing/Patient Care Improvements Sought by Nurses

The nurses have spent more than a year in negotiations with management for a new contract that would include the staffing improvements nurses need to provide safe patient care, as well as improvements in pay and benefits to compete with other hospitals in the region, with the staffing improvements the key stumbling block to a settlement, and the issue Tenet refuses to address. Those improvements include:

• Improvements to the current staffing guidelines to ensure all nurses have safe patient assignments and support staff to ensure safe patient care. These improvements are consistent with the standard of care provided at UMass Memorial Medical Center and a number of other hospitals in the state. This is a key point for reporters to understand, as Tenet falsely claims that St. Vincent has some of the best staffing in the state. First, this is not true. Staffing is better at UMass Memorial Medical Center.
• Creation of a pool of nurses who are expert in caring for critically ill patients, which is essential to support nurses in the emergency department who in addition to taking care of five or six patients, are also expected to care for patients in need of ICU level care, who are waiting for a bed to open in the ICU.
• The addition of what are called "STAT and Rapid Response" nurses, which are nurses who would be available to be assigned to floors and units when census increases, and the needs of the patients are more complex. These nurses are especially important to support newly graduated nurses, who may lack the experience to care for more challenging patients, or patients who may be in crisis. Again, UMass Memorial Medical Center provides this level of support to its nurses.

Tenet Can Afford Safe Patient Care

While nurses call for improved staffing levels, adequate PPE and the pay and benefits they need to recruit and retain the staff they need to meet the challenges of the pandemic, Tenet Healthcare's focus has been on cutting corners and recouping revenue to boost their bottom line, expecting nurses and patients to pay the price for their decisions. 

Back in April of last year, Tenet's corporate leaders in Dallas touted their plan to use furloughs and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the federal stimulus package "to ensure we were focused on maximizing our cash position" – not to improve care for patients, according to the Dallas Morning News.  Tenet has received more than $2.8 billion in loans and grants from the federal government as part of the CARES Act. During the first three quarters of 2020, the corporation generated more than $12 billion in revenue, and now has cash or cash equivalents of more than $3 billion, a 10-fold increase over 2019. 

In addition, while other hospitals have cut back on elective surgeries to free up additional staff to support care for COVID-19 patients, Tenet has pushed ahead with procedures, such as knee and hip replacements, colonoscopies and cosmetic surgeries to generate revenue at the expense of care for COVID patients.

St. Vincent Hospital has been one of Tenet's most profitable hospitals, and St. Vincent is one of the most profitable hospitals in Massachusetts.  In fact, St. Vincent Hospital generated more than $355 million between 2014 and 2019.  In 2019, the hospital posted record profits of more than $73 million, a profit margin of 14 percent, four times the state average for hospitals and five times the profit margin for UMass Memorial Medical Center, a facility that provides the staffing levels the nurses at St. Vincent are seeking, while also paying their nurses significantly more and providing better health and pension benefits.

Nurses believe that Tenet can easily afford to provide the improvements the nurses are seeking, but the nurses see the decisions being made on the local level being driven by corporate heads in Dallas.  Nurses view St. Vincent CEO Carolyn Jackson, a chemical engineer by training with no prior experience in caring for patients, as a willing tool for Tenet corporate management in Texas. 

"Tenet is a for profit healthcare conglomerate, and we cannot stand by while they take advantage of a global pandemic to, in the words of their Dallas-based CEO. 'maintain a strong cash position.' The voices of our bedside nurses must be heard," explained Marie Ritacco, RN, a nurse in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit and Vice President of the Massachusetts Nurses Association.  "We hold that patient care and the safety of the caregivers must be prioritized before profits going to Dallas and the shareholders. We will do everything in our power to shed sunlight on the decisions we believe fail to protect our patients, our community, and our families."

Contract talks with a federal mediator are set to resume on Feb. 11, the day after the strike vote. 

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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

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