New Jersey hospitals opt for profits over patients, nurses

Let’s face it: Our health care system is unaffordable for the vast majority of middle-class and low-income residents. With outrageous surprise billing for hospital patients, obscene annual doubledigit health insurance premium cost increases for both employers and employees, and prescription drug costs that leave us shaking our heads in disbelief at the checkout line, it seems that anytime we need access to our health care system, some health care company has its hand in your wallet taking more and more of your money.

Many of us now simply tolerate it, believing there is nothing we can do. It’s simply one of modern life’s most frustrating, outrageous rip-offs, like the cost of bringing a suitcase on an airplane or Ticketmaster fees to see Bruce.

The worst-kept secret of why this is happening is typical: Follow the money. The sad truth is that patients, consumers and health care workers are no longer the top priorities in our modern health care system, despite what all the feelgood television commercials and health care hero billboards say. Now every aspect of health care, from the insurance companies to the pharmaceutical distribution networks, or PBMs, to hospitals, are seeking to maximize profits (and “nonprofit” hospitals reward their executives with compensation packages, often over $10 million a year), and one way to do so is reducing labor costs.

Nowhere in the health care industry is the above pursued as aggressively as in the nursing profession. The number of nurses and other health care support professionals on duty is not mandated or based on a standard of what and how much care you, the patient, may need. Although some minor staffing standards exist in the state Health Department, they are grossly inadequate. If you or a family member has been in the hospital recently, you most likely have experienced long wait times to see a nurse, and when they do come into your room, it’s a very brief check-in so they can get to the next patient.

Hospitals readily agree they are short-staffed. However, the explanation for it varies drastically. The reason for this, according to hospital management, is simple: too much demand and not enough supply. However, this simply isn’t true. The United States has more than doubled graduations of RNs over the past 15 years, and the number of new RNs entering the workforce is at an alltime high of over 150,000 a year, reports the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

The actual reason has been ignored for years by both health care industry executives and most of our elected officials: plummeting nurse retention. One in three new nurses quit in their first two years, and the No. 1 reason given by those leaving the profession is that there are not enough nurses being hired to reduce their unmanageable patient load. Profit-driven chronic short-staffing policies place an unrealistic patient-care burden on nurses — more patients to care for and fewer nurses to do it. Despite a nurse’s dedication to the profession, it’s simply not possible to keep up and provide the care patients deserve and need to have positive outcomes.

There is a solution. Pass commonsense legislation mandating nurse-to-patient ratios. Fixing the No. 1 reason nurses state for leaving would be the answer to stopping this exodus, if only our elected officials would act.

Nurses and hospital ancillary staff, both union and non-union, are advocating to fix this problem. They have endorsed legislation in Trenton to establish minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. If it is enacted, some relief would be provided to health care workers, and research shows patient outcomes are significantly improved as well.

Most patients believe hospitals are going to do the right thing for them. However, when it comes to adequate staff levels, this is not the case. Hospitals must stop resisting this legislation, and our elected officials must listen to health care professionals at the bedside who are advocating for patients. Ignoring this legislation is giving a tacit endorsement to profit-driven status quo.

Monday, May 6, was the start of National Nurse Appreciation week, and our state Legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy should pass this law for all hospitals. Please do what we all know is right. Patients, nurses and other health care support staff are depending on you.

Charles Wowkanech is president of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.