Nurses from Lower Bucks Hospital and beyond picketed outside the facility on Bath Road Monday morning during rush hours chanting “Unsafe staffing has to go!”
The crux of the issue says Shirley Crowell, R.N., co-president of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital is when we need to leave the bedside and head outside to fight for safe staffing and quality of patient care, it breaks our hearts. But we’ll do it, because we are our patients’ best advocates.”
The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, or PASNAP, which represents the nurses says “it’s also a Prime strategy to augment their profits. In bargaining, hospital management has made proposals to gut the nurses’ contract, all the while ensuring that they are able to enrich themselves.”
Credit: Joanne Ames Lower Bucks Source
The nearly 200 unionized RNs and LPNs are both currently negotiating contracts with their mutual owner, Union officials say.
More to the point, the Union says “(t)here are shifts in which the Lower Bucks Hospital Emergency Department is staffed with just two nurses all night and there are no housekeeping staff available to take out waste and clean rooms.”
Amanda Whitaker, R.N., a Lower Bucks Hospital ICU nurse and member of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital, is still fighting with Prime four years later to cover her son’s hospital stay when he was diagnosed with life-endangering RSV. “They deny, deny, deny without even looking at the situation,” she says. “Honestly, it feels like a punch in the face. We’re in healthcare and we can’t even afford health care. It’s wrong on so many levels.”
The nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital – some of whom have spent their entire careers here – are fiercely loyal to our patients, to our community, and to our hospital,” says Crowell. “But we shouldn’t have to beg for a decent healthcare plan or for wages that are comparable to those offered at surrounding hospitals. Where is the respect for what we bring to the bedside? Where is the respect for patient care?”
The Union says Lower Bucks Hospital CEO Michael Mott rakes in well over a quarter-million dollars per year while his hospital is short-staffed on a daily basis due to massive employee vacancies caused by poor compensation and benefits.
“Prime needs to take its nurses and our issues seriously,” says ICU nurse Anna Carlin, RN, co-president of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital. “We need safe staffing for our patients’ protection, and we need a decent healthcare plan for our members so we can retain the experienced nurses we have and continue to serve our patient community to the very best of our abilities.”
Nurses picketed outside of Suburban Hospital last week.
Based in Southern California, Prime Healthcare is one of the largest for-profit hospital systems in the U.S., with more than 40 hospitals in 16 states. In Pennsylvania, Prime hospitals include Philadelphia’s Roxborough Memorial Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital. Suburban Community Hospital is also part of the Prime system, but it is owned by the company’s nonprofit arm, Prime Healthcare Foundation, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The contracts for the roughly 200 nurses who staff Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital both expired on October 12 , the Inquirer report says.
“We have been negotiating with PASNAP since early September for a new collective bargaining agreement. We are scheduled to meet with the Union again, and we’re hopeful we can come to an agreement soon to continue providing excellent care to our patients without interruption. Unfortunately, rather than focus on bargaining a fair contract for our nurses, the Union has chosen to picket,” said Prime Healthcare Spokeswoman Michelle Aliprantis.
Prime is the only medical facility system in the country to have settled three federal civil cases alleging Medicare fraud in the last six years, Union officials say.
To read the full list of the Unions grievances click here.
