“I don't think I could stress that enough,” she replied when asked if she believed nursing staffing is at unsafe levels. On a critical care step-down unit, for example, she says nurses are routinely expected to take up to 7 patients, nearly double what their contract stipulates as an acceptable nurse-to-patient ratio of 1: 3-4. However, now, she says staffing has reached critical levels in many units. Linda confirmed that while staffing challenges have always existed at Genesys, they were somewhat “manageable” before the pandemic.
Ragone declined to provide data specific to nurses, the Times reported. But, NYT pointed out that that figure partly reflects Ascension having reduced its overall capacity and additionally, does not reflect nursing-specific rates. Joseph’s number of employees per occupied bed actually increased by 6% between 20. Nick Ragone, an Ascension spokesperson, countered the claim to NYT reporters, citing that St. Times reported that according to the Illinois Nurses Association, the number of Registered Nurses at the hospital dropped by 23% at St. Reports of being overwhelmed from nurses, concerns for patient safety, and formal complaints quickly piled up. Joseph’s in 2018, staffing became progressively worse-and then the pademic hit. The Times reported that after Ascension had acquired St. In 2021, Ascension’s CEO, Joseph Impicciche, was paid $13 million according to the Times. “Their whole approach to the finances was right out of the Wall Street playbook,” said William Weeks, who worked as chief operating officer of a five-hospital chain in Oklahoma owned by Ascension, told the paper. Their strategy included hitting financial targets. “Every day it’s unsafe staffing!!!” one nurse’s note read in June 2020, said the Times.ĭriving the lack of staffing, the Times claimed, was Ascension’s executives handling the hospital system as a for-profit business, despite the fact that the hospital chain is non-profit, a status that saves it $1 billion in taxes annually. The reports and logs detailed staffing cuts, patients not receiving timely care, delayed surgeries as a direct result of insufficient staffing, and requests for more staff turned down, despite open positions. Reporters from the Times reviewed more than 3,000 pages of logs from nurses that documented unsafe conditions and spoke to 70 current and former nurses as well as other workers at the hospitals. Joseph in Illinois, acquired in 2018, and Genesys, a unionized Ascension hospital, in Michigan. To illustrate what the NYT called a larger strategy by Ascension to cut costs and boost their own profit ($18.1 billion cash reserves and an investment company that manages $41 billion in assets), the investigation focused on two specific Ascension hospitals: St. I take it very, very seriously.”Īscension Hospital Accused of Downsizing, Massive Profits & Unsafe Conditions So for me to have those kinds of raw and very real feelings is very telling.
“I've been a nurse in my heart since I was a little girl and have worked in the healthcare system since I was 15 years old. “I wanted to walk away from nursing altogether,” she tells, citing the conditions she has been working in. She described issues she has witnessed at the hospital from physicians leaving to patient care being compromised to her own well-being suffering. Linda believes they are at unsafe levels. spoke to Linda,* a 15-year veteran nurse of Genesys with nearly 30 years of healthcare experience, who confirmed that staffing is the #1 challenge nurses are currently facing at the hospital. The article claims that Ascension Hospital Systems, responsible for 139 hospitals across the nation, including Genesys in Flint, MI, strategically focused on reducing the number of employees per occupied beds and “boasted” about slashing $500 million in labor costs-all before the pandemic hit, leading to what is now critically unsafe nurse-patient ratios that are affecting patient safety and healthcare workers’ mental and physical health. In a world where nursing and other healthcare worker shortages are the new norms, it might sound unbelievable that any healthcare system would have ever focused on cutting down their employee staff-but that’s what the Ascension Hospital System did in the years leading up to the pandemic, claims a new investigation by the New York Times (NYT).
0 kommentar(er)
