NEW YORK — Time is running out, with only five days left until New York City nurses are likely to go on strike at seven major local hospitals, but the nurses union says not all of those hospitals were on the negotiating table on Wednesday.
Hospital sources told our sister network NBC New York that starting Thursday, in preparation for a possible strike, hospitals will begin what they call “decanting” their facilities. That means they’ll start canceling elective procedures, including some pretty major procedures, and discharging patients as soon as clinically possible in an effort to get the patient counting down.
In addition, sources familiar with the situation said that Mount Sinai Hospital has requested that the FDNY divert ambulances from one of its campuses, in anticipation of the strike. However, that diversion has yet to take place and it was unclear if the fire department had approved the hospital’s request.
The nurses have said there has been some progress at some bargaining tables where hospitals are negotiating with their respective nurses, but not enough to prevent a strike, yet. It was not immediately clear why the hospitals were taking breaks from talks with a looming deadline, and the responses provided to NBC New York by the hospitals were vague. Meanwhile, the nurses have said they want the talks to continue around the clock, if necessary.
“Nurses feel neglected and disrespected by their bosses,” said nurse 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.
“It might be a huge public health calamity,” Ken Raske of the Greater New York Hospital Association previously told NBC New York. He has described the mood among hospital directors as “extremely apprehensive.”
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.
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 New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the nurses there. It came to a tentative agreement 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’s a big caveat: NY-Presbyterian 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’re losing money, but the nurses at those hospitals aren’t buying the argument.
According to a source familiar with earlier Mount Sinai talks, the hospital had previously offered nurses a deal that included 14 percent raises over four years, a deal that nurses rejected and was notably 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 whether NY-Presbyterian nurses will accept the offer, Montefiore Hospital said Wednesday that nursing representatives at its hospital had turned down a deal that mirrored the one offered by 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 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.
Our sister network NBC New York has 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 that they must assume, even if the strike does not take place.
The GNYHA 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 the care of our patients is not interrupted and we will do everything possible to minimize discomfort 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.
