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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 7, 2017)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | July 7, 2017 | PAGE 7 Kaiser Permanente nurses warn of short staffing Union members, frustrated with deadlocked staffing committees, say short-staffing could diminish patient care. By Don McIntosh Nearly 1,000 employees of Kaiser Permanente’s Northwest Region have signed a petition raising concerns about under- staffing — and calling on the health maintenance organization to hire additional staff. The pe- tition was circulated by Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP) Local 5017 and signed by 803 of its members and nearly 200 other employees, including members of other unions at Kaiser. OFNHP is an affiliate of Amer- ican Federation of Teachers. Taped together and unfurled at a highly visible June 21 rally on the corner of Northeast Grand Avenue and Multnomah Street outside Kaiser North- west’s Portland headquarters, petition sheets stretched 70 feet long at two-and-a-half feet high, and took 10 people to hold them up. OFNHP leaders rolled up the petitions, wrapped them in a bow, and headed inside to pres- ent them to Kaiser top brass. But the union had no appoint- ment to see the health system’s executives, and coming at lunch time, they found that Kaiser Northwest region president An- drew McCulloch, patient safety vice president Janet O’Halloren, and HR vice president Frank Hurtarte had all gone to lunch. “Whether they are willing to climb out from under the lunch table or not, I think they got the message,” OFNHP Local 5017 President Adrienne Enghouse told about 100 rally participants back on the street. “Our patients complain about long waits for care and our coworkers are reaching a break- ing point,” the petition reads. “We understand that Kaiser ex- pects to add 30,000 new mem- bers in 2017. … Kaiser must hire sufficient frontline staff to address this spike in patient vol- ume.” Local 5017 spokesperson Megan Hise says a trend toward “lean” staffing is pervasive in the health care industry, but OFNHP wants Kaiser to be a leader, setting a standard for ad- equate staffing levels. In its Northwest Region, which extends from Eugene to Longview, Kaiser is the most unionized and some might say To protest short staffing at Kaiser Permanente, a June 21 rally drew members and staff from OFNHP and two other Kaiser unions, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 and Service Em- ployees International Union (SEIU) Local 49, as well supporters from Portland Jobs with Justice. Left, Kaiser nurse (and OFNHP president) Adrienne Enghouse holds the bull- horn as members hold up taped-to- gether petition sheets signed by nearly 1,000 Kaiser employees. The petitions were then rolled up and tied with a bow, right. “Saving lives is our daily mission,” declared UFCW Local 555 member JoAnn Grugan (above) at a June 21 rally outside Kaiser Permanente headquarters. “And safe staffing saves lives.” most beloved health insurer/ provider by local unions — for offering affordable high-quality care that saves money for union health and welfare trusts and union employers, and for keep- ing union members healthier than they might be at other providers. Kaiser has also had the least contentious labor rela- tions of any health system in the region. A national coalition of unions representing 115,000 Kaiser workers is now 20 years into an official “Labor-Manage- ment Partnership” with Kaiser, in which unit-based teams of workers and managers collabo- rate to reduce waste and im- prove the workplace. “We have a great opportunity to serve even more Kaiser mem- bers in the region — if we staff up,” said organizer Gabriel Erbs, who works with OFNHP members at Kaiser’s new West- side Medical Center in Hills- boro. “At the end of the day, our working conditions are patients’ healing conditions.” Erbs says understaffing at Westside is causing longer waits for planned appointments, par- ticularly among respiratory ther- apists and in the operating room, where Kaiser is extending hours, adding new types of sur- gery, and increasing the case- load — without adding more staff. At the rally, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 member JoAnn Grugan, a spe- cial procedure technologist at the Sunnyside Cath Lab, said half the nurses in her department have left in the past two years due to overwork. “We’re losing experienced nurses and bringing in inexperi- enced nurses,” Grugan said. “That reduces patient care.” Deadlocked staff committees OFNHP’s collective bargaining agreements with Kaiser aren’t set to expire until September 2018. But the disagreement that motivated OFNHP members to gather outside Kaiser HQ isn’t taking place at the bargaining table. It’s taking shape within hospital safe staffing committees that were set up under a 2015 Oregon law that Oregon Nurses Association, OFNHP’s sister union, helped to pass. That law requires each hospital to form a committee to draw up a plan for minimum nurse staffing levels in each unit — in order to ensure adequate patient care and safety. The plans were supposed to be The petition, signed by nearly 1,000 Kaiser employees: “Our patients complain about long waits for care and our coworkers are reaching a breaking point … Kaiser must hire sufficient frontline staff to address [a] spike in patient volume.” developed by January 2017, but no plans have yet been agreed to for any Kaiser hospital. The committees are com- posed equally of frontline nurses and nurse managers, and at Kaiser and elsewhere, that’s leading to deadlock. Enghouse, the OFNHP presi- dent, says at the March 2 meet- ing of Sunnyside Medical Cen- ter’s staffing committee, nurse manager Tonya Roth said the hospital would not consider any staffing plan that calls for an in- crease in staff. That provoked an immediate reaction from the frontline nurse members of the committee. “I said, ‘That is totally inap- propriate for you to say,” Eng- house said. On June 8, labor-side com- mittee members wrote to the Oregon Health Authority to complain about Roth’s state- ment, and to protest delays in approving the hospital’s staffing plan. Kaiser, for its part, made it clear there are two sides to the story. Understandably enough, the non-profit health provider would prefer to discuss proper staffing levels in the staffing committees, and not in the newspaper, said Kaiser Northwest spokesperson Mike Foley. But Foley did email the fol- lowing statement, reprinted here in its entirety: “H ospital leadership and staff are working together on nurse staffing plans. Patients and members are at the center of our Value Compass, which guides Kaiser Permanente’s de- cisions and operating strategy. Patient safety is always a top priority. Our hospitals are nationally recognized for safety. For example: ■ “A” patient safety ratings for KSMC and KWMC from the Leapfrog group in 2016 and Spring 2017. Sunnyside achieved Leapfrog’s Top Hospital Recognition for 2016. ■ Sunnyside named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals by Healthgrades, placing it in the top 2% of nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide. KSMC earned 8 quality award distinctions from Healthgrades in the last 12 months. ■ Highest rating for KPNW from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons for seven consecutive years. ” As for OFNHP, they’re going to try again to deliver those signed petitions. Word is that Kaiser’s national CEO, Bernard Tyson, will be attending the groundbreaking ceremony for a new clinic in Beaverton June 23, and nurses hope to be able to present it to him while he’s in town.
