OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On the same day this week, community members and nurses in cities in Florida and Maine expressed deep concern and dissatisfaction with the way CHS and QHC is operating their local hospitals.
In Venice, FL a delegation of community members and nurses attempted to meet with the Lynn Joyner, Chairman of the Board of Directors of CHS owned Venice Regional Medical Center, at the business listed by the hospital, Joyner Family Insurance. The group was following up on a letter sent by NNOC to Joyner about the newly hired CEO, Bob Moore, at VRMC. Bob Moore was CEO at Munroe Regional Medical Center, also in FL, when three RNs were terminated in May for protesting an extremely unsafe assignment which more than doubled national safety standards of 10 patients to one nurse. Community members expressed concern that they did not want similar practices to occur at VRMC.
Area community member Barbara Logan stated in the Sarasota Herald Tribune Barbara Logan that she does not want to see Venice Regional Bayfront employ staffing practices similar to what the union described. “Heart problems run in my family; I was upset that they would double the number of patients that nurses had in a surgery/cardiac part of the hospital. Instead of having five patients, they doubled it,” said Logan, who cares for her husband Dwight, who is legally blind. “I feel like, if nurses have twice as many people they’re in charge of, that might not be happening for Barbara — I might be passing on real quickly and I don’t want to do that; I’d like to live a long life, be there for my husband.”
In Calais, Maine, community members and nurses represented by NNOC attended a town hall meeting in which they were protesting the decision that Quorum-run Calais Regional Hospital (CRH) made to close the OB department and discontinue labor and delivery services. The hospital is managed by Quorum Health Resources, a subsidiary of Quorum Health Corporation which was spun-off from CHS last year. Affected patients in those communities will have to travel two hours to receive OB care. Community members invited CRH board of directors, but not one showed up. They went on to take a vote of no confidence in the leadership and draft a letter asking Quorum to leave their hospital and community.
