Over 150 hospital workers and supporters rallied for nurse’s pay and increased staffing February 14 outside of St. Charles Medical Center in Bend. The Oregon Nurses Association represents about 1,000 St. Charles nurses who are bargaining with the hospital on a new labor contract, after the previous one expired December 31. The two parties met in December and January, and are continuing their third and fourth days of negotiations.
“Our primary goal is to recruit and retain nurses, and I think the hospital is aligned with that goal as well. There’s no disagreement that we need better staffing. I don’t think there’s a dispute from either side — with administrators or a union — that we need increase in wages in order to create a better staffing situation. It’s just a matter of figuring out the specific details,” said Penn Meringoll, a registered nurse at St. Charles.
Representatives from St. Charles said the hospital system is taking steps to recruit and retain nurses. On February 13 the hospital system announced a $5 per hour increase for all registered nurses at the Bend campus.
“We totally agree that staffing is a challenge. There’s a national nursing shortage, we have to keep our wages competitive, focus on retaining and recruiting nurses and all types of caregivers that help take care of our patients,” said Julie Ostrom, senior nursing director for perioperative and cardiovascular services. “That $5-an-hour increase for RNs that was announced yesterday is a first step towards that.”
The American Federation of Teachers released a study on health care staffing in November, 2022, finding 55,000 registered nurses left the industry between 2021 and 2022, and that those leaving skewed young. A month later, ONA published a survey on nurse staffing, finding that less than 1% reported their unit is always staffed appropriately. Half of the respondents said they’re caring for too many patients on most of their shifts. Oregon law doesn’t mandate state staffing but does require nurses and managers to agree to staffing levels.
“Every unit is a little bit different, but we are focusing on numbers that are appropriate, that allow a nurse to take care of either critically or acutely ill patients in a in a better setting. So, for the ICU, we are focusing on one nurse to every two, possibly three, patients depending on their acuity. For acute care, we are focusing on one nurse to every four patients. In pediatrics, we are focusing on one nurse to every three patients,” said Megan Bovi, a Registered Nurse at St. Charles.
Negotiations can drag on for a long time, with the last round’s talks concluding in January 2019 after seven months of back and forth. Meringoll said they’re hoping to avoid contentious long-lasting negotiations, but ONA President Tamie Cline told demonstrators that negotiations are generally tougher in Central and Eastern Oregon.
“We have administration that says, ‘We’re not Portland, we can’t give you those resources.’ What they also are more than willing to say is, ‘You’re really good nurses and you really know what you’re doing, but we don’t have the money to support you guys.’ We have to work a little bit harder than anyone else in the state, because our patients are just as sick as everyone else in the state,” Cline said.
St. Charles operated at a loss during much of the pandemic. In May it announced that 105 people will be laid off and 76 vacant positions would be eliminated as the hospital operated at negative operating margin. St. Charles rebounded at the end of 2022 with four straight months in the green, but it still ended 2022 at a $17 million loss. A St. Charles spokesperson said the $5 per hour investment in caregivers will help it financially in the long run. During the pandemic St. Charles, like many health systems across the country, used more-expensive travel nurses to meet demand.
ONA Communications Manager Kevin Mealy doesn’t deny that St. Charles has been less profitable, but argued the years leading up to it was one of the most profitable eras in health care history. Oregon Health Authority records show St. Charles made over $230 million between 2012 and 2022 from just its hospitals, not including its clinics, medical groups and investment portfolio.
“How St. Charles is spending the last 10 years of record profits and its stewardships of the multimillion dollars in public funding it received are trends we need to monitor closely and consider when we hear about new quarterly returns,” Mealy said in an email.
This article appears in Source Weekly February 9, 2023.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
St. Charles found the money to pay two union-busting consultants this past summer in an effort to prevent another group of some 300 employees from forming the Central Oregon Providers Network. They have the money. They just need to drop their anti-union tendencies and treat all workers with the respect and dignity they deserve.
Once again we are not discussing the elephant in the room as to why there was a shortage during that time? What caused the shortage? Could it be that hospitals all over were shooting themselves in the foot illegally mandating workers be vaccinated with a EUA Vax that had never been tested? Get vaccinated or lose your job was the world we were living in at that time.