NEW YORK — With time running out, with just four days left until a potential strike by New York City nurses at several major local hospitals, and one of the city’s largest hospital systems is beginning to clamp down.
But in a possible ray of hope, two more hospitals reached agreements with the union on Wednesday night, which might put pressure on the others to reach an agreement.
Until then, Mount Sinai Health System is beginning to divert “most” ambulances from four of its facilities and is transferring babies from its neonatal intensive care units to other hospital systems, according to a memo from hospital leadership to staff. , a copy of which was obtained por our sister chain NBC 4.
The memo from the leaders of Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West makes it clear that most of the issues in the ongoing negotiations have been resolved, but not all, and the clock is ticking.
“To do what’s best for our patients, we have no choice but to continue our strike planning,” the memo says, outlining a series of steps:
- Desviar ambulancias del Hospital Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Morningside y Mount Sinai Beth Israel.
- Cancel elective surgeries and schedule only emergency surgeries at main and Morningside facilities.
- Transfer of some patients. “In addition, this unfortunately means transferring NICU babies outside of Mount Sinai Health System to ensure they receive much-needed care.”
- Discharge “as many patients as appropriate” and change services: hospital care at the main and west facilities, and emergency and child psychiatry at the Morningside campus.
Nurses have said there has been some progress at some bargaining tables where hospitals are negotiating with their respective employees, but not enough to prevent a strike, yet.
“Nurses feel neglected and disrespected by their bosses,” said New York State Nurses Association president Nancy Hagans. “We held the hands of dying patients, we set up last FaceTime calls so dying patients might say goodbye to their loved ones.”
Seven private hospitals (Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Maimonides, BronxCare, Richmond University Medical Center, and Flushing Hospital Medical Center) are on strike notice beginning the morning of January 9, a move that it would send already busy hospitals into full crisis mode and potentially have a devastating impact on care.
The union said Thursday morning that deals were closed Wednesday night at Maimonides and Richmond, leaving the other five still pending.
Each of the hospitals individually negotiates with their own nurses, so depending on how the talks go, there might be no strikes at all, a single strike, or as many as seven strikes.
“It might be a huge public health calamity,” he previously told NBC New York Ken Raskeof the Greater New York Hospital Association. He has described the mood among hospital directors as “extremely apprehensive.”
They claim that the lack of staff is a direct consequence of hospital systems not hiring enough nurses.
The nurses union said there has been at least one sign of progress: All the hospitals on the list except Flushing Hospital have agreed not to cut health benefits.
“There have been some offers and advances, but we’re not there yet,” Hagans said.
As of Wednesday, all eyes are on the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the nurses there. A tentative deal was reached over the weekend that, if accepted, would give nurses an 18 percent raise over the next three years, with added incentives to retain experienced nurses. There was also a promise to address chronic staff shortages, which was the union’s biggest complaint.
But there is a big caveat: NY-Presbyterian it is widely considered the richest hospital in the city, and not all hospitals are in the same financial situation. While all the hospitals have said they are negotiating in good faith, some said they can’t afford that much, a big sticking point considering some hospital executives are paid millions.
Smaller, so-called “safety net” hospitals rely more on lower reimbursement rates for the care they provide, such as through Medicare or Medicaid. Some of the others on the list say they are losing money, but the nurses at those hospitals disagree with the argument.
According to a source familiar with earlier Mount Sinai talks, the hospital had previously offered nurses a deal that included 14 percent increases over four years, a deal that nurses rejected and that was markedly lower than the offer extended by NY-Presbyterian.
“It’s really not up to us if we go out. It’s up to the bosses,” Hagans said.
While it remains to be seen if the nurses at NY-Presbyterian will accept the offer, Montefiore Hospital said Wednesday that nursing representatives at its hospital had rejected a deal that mirrored the one it offered NY-Presbyterian. A hospital spokesperson said nurses were offered “an 18 percent pay increase over three years, fully funded lifetime healthcare and a significant increase in RNs in emergency departments, among other benefits.”
That development may spell trouble for other hospitals given the financial outlook. According to Montefiore’s spokesperson, NY-Presbyterian posted $200 million in profit in 2022, while Montefiore posted $200 million in losses. That kind of deal was deemed potentially unachievable for other hospitals on the list, but now NY-Presbyterian nurses may think twice regarding ratifying the deal they tentatively agreed to (voting began Tuesday night and wraps up Saturday).
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office has previously said they are “monitoring the situation.” The sources said that both Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams receive regular daily updates on the talks. While the hospitals involved are all private, meaning neither Hochul nor Adams have a formal role, some have wondered if they would step in to lobby or try to broker a settlement.
NBC New York learned that other hospitals that haven’t settled on their nursing staff are beginning to shell out tens of millions of dollars in non-refundable down payments to keep temps on standby, a huge expense they have to bear, even if they don’t produces the strike.
The GNYHA He said doing so is once morest the interest of nurses in the union because it forces hospitals to spend money that might go to nurses, but it also increases the influence of nurses once the strike notice is issued. A nurse involved in the negotiations estimated the cost of commercial nurses to be around $10,000 per week per travel nurse. The New York State Nurses Association estimated that the mere threat of a strike has already cost temp agencies as much as $32 million, a cost they said might rise to more than $90 million if roving nurses have to fill in for them during five or six days.
“Our ERs are backed up, tripledemic is raging,” Raske said. “Even if one hospital were to go on strike, it might affect the entire system.”
The New York State Nurses Association has up to 12,000 members threatening strike action at seven respective hospitals where contracts expired on December 31.
The union says members are upset regarding staffing ratios at local hospitals, contract proposals they feel drastically worsen their health care benefits (while paying big bonuses to executives), and Mayor Adams’ recent decision to hospitalize forcibly psychiatric patients. All of those elements have left workers overworked and exhausted.
“We can’t clean the patient on time, we can’t give medication on time, there are no breaks,” Allen said. “The burnout was real, so we left the profession and went to work for a travel agency that is going to pay us more.”
In a statement Monday, a Mount Sinai spokesperson said its bargaining teams “continue to make good faith efforts to achieve a contract with NYSNA that is fair to our community and responsible for the long-term financial health of our organization.” “. Mount Sinai nurses deserve the best possible work environment, wages and benefits, and we tirelessly pursue them for the benefit of all our employees.”
The statement added that the hospital system is “prepared for personnel changes, and we will do everything possible to ensure that our patients’ care is uninterrupted and to minimize inconvenience to patients.”
The median salary for nurses in New York is $93,000 and $98,000 in New York City, the nurses union and GNYHA have confirmed. However, there is a wide disparity between the pay of nurses in private and public hospitals, where salaries are nearly $20,000 less.
All of this comes as the city grapples with what’s being called a tridemic: severe, simultaneous spikes in COVID-19 infections, the flu, and the respiratory condition RSV.
The city has already issued a notice (but not a mandate) suggesting that people return to wearing masks indoors.
Ricardo Villarini with the details.
