LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A new report by the Service Employees International Union – the nation's largest union of healthcare workers – indicates that HCA Healthcare hospitals are experiencing a patient care crisis “due to systemic low staffing.”
The report, titled "Care Crisis: How Low Staffing Contributes to Patient Care Failures at HCA Hospitals," analyzed federal data and found that staffing at HCA hospitals is about 30% lower than the national average, with staffing in Nevada being 34% lower than the national average.
According to the report, a recent survey of SEIU nurses and other front-line workers at HCA hospitals found that 80% of surveyed workers reported witnessing patient care being jeopardized by short-staffing and that they themselves were experiencing extreme burnout.
“We want to be the best nurses possible, but we are not being given the staffing and resources to give our patients the care they need and deserve,” said Jody Domineck, who has been a registered nurse in the pediatrics department at an HCA hospital in Las Vegas for over 16 years. “Understaffing forces us to make impossible, gut-wrenching choices: Do I rush to the kid having trouble breathing, or help the kid who desperately needs more pain medication? It feels like playing a frantic game of medical whack-a-mole, running from the most threatening crisis to the next. Some days we sit in the car at the end of our shift and cry, because it’s so demoralizing when you do everything you can and it’s still not enough. HCA needs to protect us so we can continue to protect our patients.”
Additionally, the report stated that HCA hospitals have performed worse than average on key patient quality indicators, including death from pneumonia, and on patient satisfaction scores.
The report also highlighted that out of all hospitals nationally in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 2021 report, 5% have rates that are reported as worse than the national mortality rate for pneumonia. Among HCA hospitals, that proportion is 11%.
Similarly, CMS found postoperative respiratory failure rates were higher than average at 2% of hospitals nationally and at 4% of HCA hospitals.
“Frontline healthcare workers at HCA hospitals are struggling with extreme understaffing and total physical, mental and emotional exhaustion,” said Ralaya Allen, who has been a registered nurse in the emergency room at an HCA hospital in Las Vegas for over two decades. “There are many days in the ER where nurses are treating five acutely ill patients each, so we’re often forced to just triage and put out fires. HCA must respect their dedicated staff and patients the way they respect their shareholders.”
The report also accuses the company of diverting billions of dollars away from front-line care and into executive and shareholder payouts. In 2021, HCA reported nearly $7 billion in profits and distributed $8 billion in payouts to shareholders. Since 2011, the report claims that the HCA has paid out more than $32 billion to investors.
In response, more than 200 HCA nurses and other workers from across Florida, Texas, California, and Nevada rallied at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles, sharing first-hand accounts of grueling burnout and their concerns that patient care and safety are compromised by chronic short-staffing.
“We’re so short-staffed in the operating room and throughout the entire hospital that workers are severely burned out,” said Erika Watanabe, who has been a certified surgical technician at an HCA hospital in Las Vegas for 18 years. “Because of short staffing, I’ve sometimes been forced to work 19 hours straight and have been called in on multiple weekends. There are patient care techs getting 18 patients per shift. That is just not fair to workers or the patients we’re caring for. Despite all the hardships, we’ve shown up for our community and our hospital throughout the pandemic. Now HCA needs to show up for us.”
With the release of this report, frontline nurses and other healthcare workers are calling on HCA to address the care crisis at its facilities by raising staffing to safer levels, improving pay and working conditions for frontline staff, and prioritizing higher-quality patient care.
In response to the report, Sunrise Health System has issued a statement strongly condemning the report, claiming the SEIU has a history of “attacking a bullying community hospitals with cleverly-packaged, misleading information and staged events to garner media coverage.”
“The reality is, against the backdrop of a national nursing shortage, exacerbated by a pandemic and continuing patient surges, our staffing is safe, appropriate, and in line with other community hospitals and applicable regulations,” the statement read.
Read the full statement from the Sunrise Health System below.
At Sunrise Health System, we believe a strong culture of respect and collaboration among our colleagues is critical to our mission. We value all members of our care teams and we provide a safe environment for our patients.
We strongly disagree with the SEIU's allegations. The SEIU has a history of attacking and bullying community hospitals with cleverly-packaged, misleading information and staged events designed to garner media coverage. The labor union’s report cherry-picked the CMS cost report data that supported its narrative and simply ignored the data that did not.
The reality is, against the backdrop of a national nursing shortage, exacerbated by a pandemic and continuing patient surges, our staffing is safe, appropriate, and in line with other community hospitals and applicable regulations.
Our hospitals are proud to have received many recent recognitions from Healthgrades including each one being recognized as one of the Top 250 hospitals in the country. We live our mission each day, committing to the care and improvement of human life. [We’re] serving the greater Las Vegas community and surrounding states, which translates to nearly 900,000 patient visits annually.
We expect a variety of labor union tactics like this as we are set to begin our regular cycle of bargaining with the labor union in the near future.
