RNs demand that HHC meet its mission

On the move with our message

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NYSNA nurses start from a simple premise: Healthcare is a human right. We strive to make this ideal real every day in our work as front-line caregivers and patient advocates. It’s an ideal that grounds the public healthcare system.

And it’s under siege.

Public hospitals are being squeezed from all sides. Acuity is rising among patients. Reimbursement rates are falling. Private hospitals are closing or cutting services, and cherry picking patients with the best insurance.

This leaves safety net hospitals to meet greater needs with fewer resources. Management’s solution: greater “efficiency” – doing more with less. But that’s dangerous business when lives are at stake. Fewer nurses cannot care for more patients. Assembly lines are meant for factory production, not caring for the sick. Patients need time and attention to be put back together, as it were, in a way that goods simply don’t. This is what our campaign for safe staffing is about.

Speaking out at HHC

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) is required to hold just one public meeting in each borough every year. This year, NYSNA members gave these meetings some teeth. Instead of the usual pro forma, dull sessions, we were out in numbers, making our case.

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We highlighted key concerns: cutting services, the effects of short staffing, threats to inpatient behavioral healthcare, and the dangers of privatization.

New York City has the best public hospital system in the country. We intend to keep it that way by making sure that HHC lives up to its mission.

That’s why we’re standing strong for safe staffing and respect for our nursing practice. It's also part of the reason that a new contract is so important. A contract defends standards, which helps retain experienced nurses and attract new ones.

It can be tough going, but our actions get results: HHC is reopening Labor and Delivery at North Central Bronx Hospital. Now we’re pressing for HHC to deliver early on its commitment.

Dramatic Effects

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The well-being of New York City’s public healthcare system is a matter of life and death to the people of our city. NYSNA nurses brought the issues that threaten quality care to light with a little street theater before HHC’s public meetings. The challenges New Yorkers and front-line caregivers face are no laughing matter, but sometimes humor makes the point that much more pointed.

Our actions included: an expectant mom worrying about where she’ll deliver in the face of Labor and Delivery’s closing at North Central Bronx Hospital; the time burglar stealing vacation and sick time from nurses at Elmhurst Hospital because of short staffing; patients playing musical beds because of the pressure on psych beds in Brooklyn. And of course we chanted, sang, signed petitions, and generally made it known: Nurses will not sit quietly and let public healthcare be starved.

We won’t allow patient care to be compromised. Privatization and outsourcing threaten HHC’s mission to deliver quality care to every patient in need.”

– Anne Bové, RN, Bellevue Hospital and president of the NYSNA HHC Executive Council

Brooklyn in need

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HHC has 50 percent of Brooklyn’s psych capacity, but its beds are almost always full. Where will people in need go if Interfaith and LICH, which together provide 18 percent of the borough’s psychiatric beds, and the only ones in the central-south part, close?

UPDATE

Westchester RNs fight on

Nurses at Westchester Medical Center are standing strong in the struggle to win safe staffing. In 2012, they filed more than 3,600 Protests of Assignment (POAs) because layoffs left them without enough qualified staff to meet patients’ needs safely. In 2013, they did the same.

“Due to outsourcing of our valuable resources, our nursing assistants and hospital clerks, our jobs caring for patients have become more difficult,” notes Jules Hatzel, RN. “We continue to impress upon management the need for increased RN positions and educational retraining for our outsourced personnel.”

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