Striking nurses from Massachusetts will travel to Tenet Healthcare’s Dallas headquarters on Wednesday to deliver a petition calling out the hospital company’s “complete disdain for its nurses” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The nurses, along with the Massachusetts Nurses Association, plan to make a direct appeal to Tenet CEO Ronald Rittenmeyer to address what they call a patient safety crisis at the company’s St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester caused by a lack of sufficient PPE and understaffing. The group decided to come to Dallas after Tenet threatened to permanently replace the striking nurses.
“Patient safety comes first, and Saint Vincent Hospital is nationally recognized for providing world-class medical care,” a Tenet spokesperson said. “We will take receipt of any submission from the MNA as and when delivered and, in the same spirit, we have made multiple offers to the union, stand ready to negotiate in good faith, and hope to welcome our nurses back soon to serve the Worcester community.”
Nurses, as well as federal lawmakers, are also calling for a congressional investigation into Tenet’s use of pandemic-related government funds. In a June 29 letter to Rittenmeyer from U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and two of the state’s members of Congress, James P. McGovern and Lori Trahan, the officials requested an explanation of its spending. The letter referenced Tenet’s decisions to furlough staff and delay the delivery of employee benefits during the pandemic as reasons for the request.
The letter requests a complete list of all the state and federal COVID-related funding the company received, as well as a complete accounting of how it spent these funds.
Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Rosa Delauro (D-Conn.) also sent a letter to the U.S. Health and Human Services director, Xavier Becerra, and Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Rebecca Slaughter requested a federal investigation to determine whether Tenet and other major hospital operators misused stimulus grants and other pandemic-related relief funds.
“The CARES Act has been vital in helping to partially offset the unprecedented strain on the health care system caused by the pandemic,” the Tenet spokesperson said. “The government support we received was used solely for the purpose of providing COVID relief in accordance with the terms and conditions of the support funding.”
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The 116-day strike by the nurses is the longest in the U.S. in a decade from the front-line workers who bore witness to the worst of the pandemic.
Their daily routine was “holding up a phone to somebody’s loved one, or being the only one in the room while people died, day after day after day, and having to deal with the emotional impact of that, knowing you weren’t safe yourself,” said David Schildmeier, director of public communications for the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Marlena Pellegrino, a registered nurse and longtime St. Vincent employee, said that with the hospital’s no visitor policy, nurses acted as the “conduit to their family.”
“There was even more responsibility put on us to make sure that we kept families involved, and you have to be the ones with the patient while they died while their family member was on an iPad,” Pellegrino said.
Pellegrino said that nurses sometimes worked with five COVID patients at once while other nurses were furloughed or sent home early. These shortages, Pellegrino said, caused issues on a scale she’d never seen before.
“You see the falls, you see the urinary tract infections, you see the bedsores increase, you just see patients waiting for pain meds and you don’t know how to get into the room any faster unless you cut yourself into five different people,” Pellegrino said. “And there’s really no reason for it when they have the resources.”
Tenet said that all nurses furloughed “did so out of their own individual choice,” and that the hospital’s nurse staffing-to-patient ratio is better than 75% of comparable hospitals in Massachusetts.
Tenet also said it completed a thorough investigation of the Massachusetts Nursing Association’s claims and “found a complete absence of evidence of patient safety or staffing issues,” and that patient outcomes had improved.
The petition has been signed by over 700 nurses and is 16 feet long, according to a press release from the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
The group said Tenet’s actions put staff and patients at a high risk of exposure to COVID-19 and came with “with real life-and-death consequences,” according to the petition.
The health care workers and members of Congress also questioned the company’s use of the $936 million in grants and $1.5 billion in relief from Medicare Advance Payments and payroll tax match deferrals. The Massachusetts Nurses Association alleges that Tenet used CARES Act funding to pay for corporate expansion, pay down debt and buy back stock.
The group heading to Dallas includes 17 nurses from St. Vincent and two health care workers from California. They plan to gather outside Tenet’s headquarters in North Dallas at noon Wednesday to hold a press conference and attempt to deliver their petition to Rittenmeyer.
Tenet says it has “worked hand-in-hand with our unions, reaching dozens of agreements during the pandemic. We brought that same spirit to the table with the Massachusetts Nurses Association., holding over 30 bargaining meetings and delivering multiple proposals with improved terms as we work in earnest to reach an agreement. Each of these proposals, including the most recent over the weekend, reflects our commitment to our hard-working nurses, including higher wages, enhanced benefits, increased staffing and tighter hospital security. The Massachusetts Nurses Association has responded by rejecting each offer without even giving members the opportunity to vote.”
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