Striking nurses at St. Vincent Hospital starved of strike pay by MNA
Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, are in the fourth week of an open-ended strike, demanding safe staffing ratios. Having walked out on March 8, 10 days after issuing management a strike notice, they have sacrificed nearly four weeks of pay.
The Dallas, Texas-based corporate owner, Tenet Healthcare, has so far spent $22 million for strikebreakers, public relations, and police details, and recently installed surveillance towers, in what has become a one-sided war of attrition, as the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) union seeks to isolate and wear down nurses, depriving them of strike pay.
St. Vincent Hospital nurses in Worcester, Mass. in second week of strike for safe staffing ratios
Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, have entered their second week of an ongoing strike. They are demanding that Tenet Healthcare, which owns St. Vincent Hospital, agree to establish strict ratios for safer patient and workplace conditions. The roughly 700 nurses on the picket line, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, have been joined by other health care workers, including personal care assistants (PCA), pulmonary technicians and housekeepers, who face similarly dangerous conditions at the hospital.
On February 10 the nurses gave 89 percent approval to authorize a strike. Negotiations resumed the next day but quickly stalled again, as hospital management refused to address their central concern: assignment limits of four patients to every nurse on medical-surgical floors.
Mount Vernon Hospital workers rally to call for equality in health care
News 12 Staff
Updated on:Mar 13, 2021, 2:15pm EST
Health care workers in Mount Vernon rallied on Friday on
the City Hall steps, calling the city a prime example of the racial disparities
prevalent in the health care system, especially during the pandemic.
Mount Vernon Hospital nurse Bernetta Urquhart was fired up
after she says she s faced a year of chronic understaffing and cuts to
services.
Montefiore also closed the ICU in Mount Vernon during the
pandemic, forcing critical patients to be sent to neighboring hospitals. Montefiore closing this ICU is hurting people every
Improving nurse staffing in New York hospitals could reduce deaths, save money
According to a new study published in
Medical Care, improving hospital nurse staffing as proposed in pending legislation in New York state would likely save lives. The cost of improving nurse staffing would be offset by savings achieved by reducing hospital readmissions and length of hospital stays.
Researchers at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, conducted independent research in early 2020 on whether pending nurse staffing legislation in New York state is in the public s interest. The study of 116 hospitals and 418,000 Medicare patients documented large differences in patient-to-nurse ratios by hospital from an average of 4.3 patients for each nurse to as many as 10.5 patients per nurse. The wide variation in patient-to-nurse ratios across hospitals in New York is contributing to avoidable deaths and unnecessary costs.