HealthAlliance nurses to CEO: Don't cut staff, services
Nurses at HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster will deliver a petition to CEO Deborah Weymouth today, asking her to rescind plans to reduce staffing and reorganize patient care services, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the union representing the nurses.
According to a statement from the MNA, a petition signed by 233 nurses, or nearly 90 percent of HealthAlliance nurses, will hand deliver the petition to Weymouth this morning before they hold a press conference outside the hospital at Noon.
The nurses say HealthAlliance’s plans to reduce staffing will increase nurses’ patient loads in the medical-surgical unit from five to six patients, which the nurses say could increase the risk of death for those patients.
HealthAlliance, part of UMass Memorial Health Care, also proposes cutting staff in its emergency department, the MNA said, which the unions said will increase wait times as well as the risk of complications for the patients. In addition, HealthAlliance plans to merge its labor and delivery, maternity and pediatric units while cutting staffing, according to the MNA.
HealthAlliance spokeswoman Kelli Rooney said in a statement Monday afternoon that the hospital "recognizes and values the contributions of our nurses and all of our caregivers" and that HealthAlliance is "committed to maintaining appropriate staffing levels to provide the high level of care that our patients need, expect and deserve every day.”
Meanwhile, HealthAlliance was set to release a consultant’s report this morning that HealthAlliance management had said was the basis for plans to reduce staff and consolidate services. This follows the filing of an unfair labor practice charge by the MNA with the National Labor Relations board in June, when the hospital failed to share the report with nurses, according the MNA.
Rooney said that in the future, such reports will be shared with the nursing staff as a matter of course.
In June, HealthAlliance announced that by Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year, it would cut staff, which the nurses’ union said amounted to about 20 full-time-equivalent positions, citing declining patient volumes.
“Given the dramatic and sweeping changes taking place nationally and regionally in health care, going forward, we will continue to review our staffing levels and make adjustments. We know that any workforce reduction involves real people and real jobs,” Weymouth wrote in a memo to staff. “These are difficult decisions that are taken very seriously particularly when they involve those who have supported the mission we share on behalf of the people in North Central Massachusetts.”
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