Nurses at New York-Presbyterian Hospital have ratified a contract, with tentative agreements reached at a number of different metropolis medical facilities forward of a strike set to start on Monday. Thousands of nurses at three different hospitals are nonetheless planning to walk out if they will’t reach agreements with administration.
At a digital press briefing on Saturday morning, New York State Nurses Affiliation President Nancy Hagans stated the group’s principal concern is low staffing ranges, which she stated put sufferers in peril.
“We are urging those three hospitals to go back to the table and negotiate in good faith and provide safe patient-nurse ratios,” she stated.
The nurses are additionally calling for pay raises to maintain up with the value of residing, together with enhancements to their medical insurance packages.
Members of the nurses union at a number of hospitals and well being techniques all through the metropolis introduced their plans to strike on Dec. 30 if directors didn’t meet their calls for. Since then, nurses have reached preliminary offers at Richmond College Medical Heart, Flushing Hospital Medical Heart, BronxCare and the Brooklyn Hospital Heart, along with newly ratified contracts at Maimonides Medical Heart and New York-Presbyterian. Directors at these hospitals agreed to pay raises and staffing will increase.
No agreements have been reached at Montefiore Medical Heart in the Bronx and the Mount Sinai West and Morningside campuses.
A spokesperson for Montefiore didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Lucia Lee, a spokesperson for Mount Sinai, stated the hospital system is continuous to barter and that it has agreed to pay will increase.
“Mount Sinai is dismayed by NYSNA’s reckless actions,” the hospital system stated in a press release. “The union is jeopardizing patients’ care, and it’s forcing valued Mount Sinai nurses to sacrifice their dedication to patient care and their own livelihoods.”
The Mount Sinai hospital system has began to redirect ambulances and cancel some elective surgical procedures in anticipation of a strike. It has additionally been transferring some sufferers at the affected campuses to different hospitals, together with infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Hagan stated the hospital was “stirring fears” by transferring NICU sufferers and that union members at Mount Sinai had been “outraged by these tactics.” She stated nurses have already been pressured to jeopardize their neonatal sufferers’ security by caring for twice as many infants as they’re purported to.
Mount Sinai’s Chief Nursing Officer Fran Cartwright stated there have been efforts to deal with understaffing in the NICU and different departments.
“We put in an overtime bonus,” she stated. “We put in a lot of travelers, the agency nurses, and we were actually able to stabilize the staffing there. We’re not at 100%.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul stated on Friday that her workplace has been talking often with nurses and hospital directors to attempt to resolve their disagreements with no disruption to well being care providers in New York Metropolis.
“My full expectation is this will be resolved, because there is no alternative,” she stated. “We need to make sure that the people of New York are taken care of.”
If union members at the three remaining hospitals don’t conform to contracts by 6 a.m. Monday, as many as 8,700 nurses could keep dwelling from work. Nurses at Wyckoff Heights Medical Heart have additionally stated they plan to strike on Jan. 17 if they will’t agree on a brand new contract.
Jon Campbell contributed reporting.