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The SF Examiner has an interesting piece on the Mills-Peninula Health Services' assertion that the hospital in San Mateo doesn't really benefit from the Downtown San Mateo Association's work to maintain and improve its downtown.
I'm not sure I buy that argument and it certainly isn't very good PR. I'm guessing the hospital employees also benefit from a healthy, attractive downtown and that may help hiring and retention.
This might just be the first step in Sutter closing it down. With the new hospital they will look for opportunities/excuses to downsize.
While most of the hospital district residents paid little or no attention to the past 11 years between negotiations and building of the new hospital, core services were greatly erroded. They have already downsized. We no longer have accute rehab or accute pediatric service…they don’t make enough money.
However it’s my opinion that in order for Mills to close, Sutter has to go into paramount default which would mean selling off Peninsula hospital first since it only owns the building, not the land it sits on. Much of the service that was moved to Mills (or out of our county) is because Sutter didn’t want to spend the extra millions to build out the remaining 2 shell floors (i.e. empty) of the new hospital to house them. It’s also my opinion that Sutter will go into paramount default long before the 50 year contract on the Taj Mahal with surgical suites expires.
The public should be questioning the “charitable” nature of Sutter and what that “charity” actually entails…the excuse used in the article.
It sounds like Pat is quite informed about this issue. More so than I.
But, I would add in defence of Sutter, they were essentially forced to build a new hospital (Taj Mahal) by the state and voters that agreed with this decree. The code requirements were extremely stringent and costly. When we hear politicians complain about health care costs, no one holds them at all responsible for being huge contributors to cost increases.
I am not clear on why hospitals need to be much safer than schools. We all pay for the cost of these new hospitals, in many ways. Cuts in services naturally follow when money is diverted to the physical plant.
The Nurses will go on strike Dec 22… http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=224514&title=Local%20nurses%20to%20join%20strike&eddate=12/13/2011%2003:35:00
Sutter nurses in San Mateo and Burlingame will be among those walking off the job next week as part of a one-day Bay Area strike to protest what they say are sweeping cuts to patient advocacy and health care coverage.
The strike scheduled for Dec. 22 is expected to involve up to 4,000 Bay Area registered nurses employed at eight Sutter hospitals, according to the California Nurses Association.
Nearly 2,000 registered nurses at Long Beach Memorial Hospital in Southern California will join them in solidarity.
In San Mateo County, Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and San Mateo will be affected.
The nurses say Sutter’s proposed cuts will endanger patient care and their own ability to provide adequate care for their families.
“We staunchly refuse to be silenced on patient care protections. As nurses, we speak up and we insist on standards that safeguard our patients, but Sutter doesn’t want to hear about anything that might cut into their huge profits,” Sharon Tobin, a registered nurse at Sutter Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame, said in a prepared statement.
But Sutter, in its own pre-strike announcement, said the nurse’s union is “unfortunately” choosing to strike during the holidays when it is “especially difficult” for patients and families.
Sutter Heath said the average full-time nurse earns $136,000 annually, receives an employer-paid pension plan worth $84,000 annually in retirement, has 40 paid days off each year and most have the option of a 100 percent employer-paid health benefits package. A part-time nurses earns an average of $105,000 with similar benefits, Sutter said. The union’s call for new and enhanced benefits will increase the cost of health care, Sutter said in its statement.
Next week’s planned walk out comes on the heels of a similar protest Sept. 22 which CNA was spurred by “nearly 200 demands for major contract concessions made by the hospital giant despite amassing over $3.7 billion in profits since 2005.”
The CNA argues that Sutter Health netted $3.7 billion in profits in the past six years all while asking nurses to make concessions like paying thousands of dollars more annually in out-of-pocket medical expenses and restrictions on doctor choices, reduced benefits for employees working less than 30 hours a week, reduced maternity leave and disciplining nurses who don’t meet arbitrary “patient satisfaction” goals based on budget priorities.
Aside from cuts to their own benefits, local nurses said at the September walkout they were protesting parent Sutter Health’s decision to close specialized pediatric care, acute rehabilitation, dialysis and skilled nursing care services.
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I have sent the following letter to the Editor:
Editor;
I am distressed every time I see our Mills Peninsula Health Services nurses out on the street corner on strike. However I am in sympathy with their fight to retain high levels of patient care and their fight to protect what remaining services we still have in our hospital. I think it is in our community interest to let Sutter know that when it imports out of state nurses and is tied into an employment contract that Sutter should not lock out our nurses for the remainder of that contract, be it 5 days or even a single day. Sutter management should simply bite the bullet and recognize that the cost of doing business is to eat the rest of the employment costs by sending the replacements home and allowing our nurses back to work lest our community suffer a similar patient tragedy as happened in San Francisco at a Sutter hospital during the last lockout.
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Folks, if we don’t start paying attention to how our hospital is run, we are going to end up with only just enough service to treat a hangnail.
Thanks for this information. After I read it the advertising in the Times caught my eye where it said that full time RNs are getting
More than $136,000 a year
A $84,000 a year pension when they retire
Up to 40 days off paid a year
Most have 100% health insurance paid for them
Is all this correct? Are they being selective by just talking about RNs?
After a bit of research this is the best answer that I could put together…
Sutter is always about money. Notice they never address patient care takeaways they have on the table.
To answer the questions.
1. a full time nurse who has worked at the hospital 15 years or more can make $130,000/year.
2. the pension figure differs from nurse to nurse. A lot of what they are quoting is calculating for a fairly new nurse and what she will have as a pension in the future
3. in order for a nurse to get 40 days off paid a year she would have to have worked 10 years.
4.until Jan 2012 it is true a nurse has her own health care premium paid at 100% but if there are any dependents she pays more. As of Jan 2012 the hospital has unilaterally tripled what every nurse pays. This was not negotiated. They did it unilaterally!
40 days off paid is 8 weeks. Nobody gets 8 weeks paid. That can’t be right.
I don’t get the last part either. Triple of nothing out of pocket is still nothing.
It’s not about the paycheck……….
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=226106&title=OP-ED:%20A%20nurse%92s%20perspective&eddate=01/06/2012
OP-ED: A nurse’s perspective
January 06, 2012, 04:12 AM By Linda Pene-Nagare
I have been a registered nurse working in critical care and surgical units at Mills-Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame for 32 years. As a nurse, I have always seen patient advocacy as one of my most important roles — whether I’m working inside the hospital or picketing out in front of it.
So I stood on the picket line this holiday season with my “Sutter is the Grinch” sign not just because Sutter’s proposed takeaways will impact me, personally, as an employee. I also went on strike because I don’t like what Sutter’s changes will mean for you, my patients.
Here’s the bottom line: With an eye on increasing its already sizable profits, Sutter is proposing cuts that will result in a decreased quality of health care in this community.
Our community does not realize that to save money, Sutter is eliminating or selling off essential programs that have provided health care to our patients for more than 50 years. During 2011, our Dialysis and the Skilled Nursing Unit programs were sold. The Acute Rehab Unit at Mills was closed two years ago.
Pediatrics no longer exists at our hospital. Have a sick child in the emergency room who needs to be admitted? You’ll be directed to Stanford or a hospital in San Francisco. If an emergent surgery, like an appendectomy, must be performed on a child at Peninsula Hospital, they’ll wake up in the ICU at Peninsula, alongside critically ill adults — hardly an appropriate place for a child.
Next to close, no later than December 2012, is the Mills Stand-by Emergency Room. This will mean there will be no on-site physician on the Mills campus to serve programs such as Cardiac Rehab and the Recovery Care Inn.
In addition to these program cuts, Sutter is proposing takeaways that would negatively affect nurses’ salary, benefits and retirement packages. Far from the distorted numbers Sutter has presented to the press recently, our current benefits package, created over the course of a 20-year negotiation process, is modest.
A further reduction would limit our ability to recruit qualified nurses. Recruitment will only become more important in the future. In the next 10 years, as baby boomers age, patient population will increase as a large percentage of the nursing workforce retires (the average age of nurses in the United States is now 44.5).
Sutter’s dishonest portrayal of the average nurse’s benefits package is just one of several piece of misinformation that I find aggravating. In the press, Sutter has attempted to take advantage of both the Health Care Reform Act and the current poor economic climate to argue that cuts are imperative.
Here’s the truth though: Through the American Hospital Association, Sutter actually lobbied in support of the passage of the Health Care Reform Act. Why? More people with insurance can only lead to a positive outcome for hospitals. Don’t be fooled by the excuse Sutter needs to make cuts because of the legislation.
As for the poor economic climate: Sutter has admitted to a “good financial “ year in 2011. It earned more than $3.7 billion in profits over the past six years — enough to leave Pat Fry, its “not-for-profit” CEO, a salary of $4 million per year and 20 other administrators with salaries over $1 million dollars each. Sutter also made a $1 million donation to the Sacramento Kings basketball team this past year. Rather than financial distress, these facts paint a picture of corporate greed and a misappropriation of money that could have been used in the health care realm.
If the Health Care Reform Act and the economic climate make doing business for hospitals tougher, why have Kaiser, UC, Marin General and San Mateo County hospitals all recently settled contracts with their nurses with no takeaways? How are they doing it? If any institution has financial concerns, wouldn’t it be the county?
The reality is, it’s not Sutter who’s in trouble, but you and I. As nurses, through our union, we advocate for ourselves as well as our patients (Did you know, for example, that thanks to our tireless lobbying efforts, California was the first state in the nation to adopt nurse-to-patient ratio laws?). As you drive by or visit us in our new shiny building, please don’t forget the old adage: “It’s what inside that counts.” In 2012, we nurses are counting on you to support us and advocate for the health care you deserve.
Linda Pene-Nagare, RN, BSN has lived in San Mateo County her entire life. Having raised her two children here, Linda is an active community member. She has stayed involved through her church, PTA, recreational sports and school nursing in Burlingame and Millbrae. Professionally, she has worked as a nurse in acute care at Peninsula hospital since 1979.
I just received this email from a Mills Peninsula RN, and I want to note that this is the 5th time in 8 months that the nurses have gone on strike. I think it’s time we ask ourselves why Kaiser, Sequoia, Seton, and SMC General (formerly Chope) haven’t gone on strike in more years than I can remember. What is is about Sutter’s administration, statewide I might add, that has the RNs so dissatisfied?….
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> To the community,
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> Unfortunately Mills Peninsula Health Services ($utter) continues to not bargain in good faith with the RNS, so we will be going on strike again for one day July 3. the hospital has chosen to lock us out for another 4 days.
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> Our issues center around patient care and safety as well as quality of life for the RNs. The hospital refuses to give us the information we need to address the proposals they have submitted to us. We cannot and will not make concessions without the information.
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> The hospital advertises that there will be “skilled” replacement nurses and that it will be “business as usual”. while the scabs they bring in do work in other hospitals, many are from the south where there are different standards. It is also kind of like going into someone else’s kitchen to cook when they only get 1-2 days orientation to function in a hospital they have never been in before. On top of that, the majority of the regular RNs who work at Mills Peninsula will be on strike and therefore not many resource people to back up the scabs.
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> The RNs at Mills Peninsula live and work in this community and are committed to providing our patients with the best care possible. After all, the RN is your last line of defense when you are in the hospital.
It’s all about life over money!
Thank you, Pat, for this clarification. We have long valued and appreciated the exceptional care provided by the nursing staff at Mills-Peninsula.
Clearly, the patient’s interests are not a consideration in the Sutter business model.
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