With two days to go before a planned strike, the Minnesota Nurses Association is going public with stories of alleged poor patient care to back its assertion that Twin Cities hospitals are dangerously understaffed. The union, which says hospital staffing is at the core of its dispute with management, has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon to tell some of those stories. —Star Tribune, 06/08/10 More »
Santa Barbara received a special visit from Queen Meg on Friday, a comedic performance of a royal pain who claims to be running to be the next governor of California. The farcical impersonation of candidate Meg Whitman was sponsored by the California Nurses Association, who created the guerilla theater at Shoreline Park to illustrate what they claim are Ms. Whitman's unscrupulous defense of business and her attacks on the environment. —Santa Barbara News-Press, 06/05/10 More »
Republicans have yet to formally decide their gubernatorial nominee, but California Democrats are already launching their campaign against the candidate they expect to win: frontrunner Meg Whitman. —Los Angeles TImes, 06/02/10 More »
Thousands of nurses in Minnesota and California on Friday announced plans to walk off the job for a single day next month if they don't reach contract agreements with hospitals. The nurses — 12,000 in the Minneapolis area and nearly 13,000 at hospitals across California — both set June 10 as a strike date. The walkout stands to be the largest in U.S. history. —Associated Press, 05/28/10 More »
In a stunning whistleblower lawsuit, the world's largest pharmaceutical company is being sued over the dangerous practice of illegally promoting a kidney transplant drug for unapproved uses -- and targeting African-Americans, even though they are at high risk of complications. —Huffington Post, 05/25/10 More »
Nurses turned out by the hundreds this morning to vote on a possible one-day strike at 14 Twin Cities hospitals, and many said the only suspense is about when the walkout will take place. —Minneapolis Star Tribune, 05/19/10 More »
For thousands of Illinois residents who pay high health insurance premiums because of medical problems, the new federal health care legislation won't offer relief. The 16,000 residents who already pay into Illinois' high-risk health insurance pool will keep paying high rates, while others who enroll this summer under a new, similar program will get coverage at much lower, more reasonable prices. —Associated Press, 05/16/10 More »
Health insurance companies are lobbying federal and state officials in an effort to ward off strict regulation of premiums and profits under the new health care law. The effort is, in some ways, a continuation of the battle over health care that consumed Congress last year. —New York Times, 05/15/10 More »
During National Nurses Week, registered nurses from across the country May 11 put health care employers on notice that they do not intend to sign concessionary collective bargaining agreements that are “injurious” to their patients or their profession. —Bureau of National Affairs, 05/12/10 More »
Roughly a thousand nurses rallied in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, including a few from the borderland. Monica Sanchez, a registered nurse from El Paso, said she traveled nearly 2,000 miles in hopes of sending a message to Congress. "We need to do better," said Sanchez. "We really need to advocate for our patients and get the staffing ratios to help us help the patients." —KFOX, 05/12/10 More »
Good morning National Nurses United! Thank you Ms. Zenei Cortez for the kind introduction. And thank you all for the invitation to join you today. I want to say hello to all my nursing friends from California. —U.S. Department of Labor, 05/11/10 More »
For the second time in two years, nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center voted in favor of union representation. The National Labor Relations Board announced that the nurses rejected, by a 113-97 vote, an employee's request to decertify the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee as their representative. It has represented the nurses since 2008. —Houston Chronicle, 04/29/10 More »
Flying into Haiti for the first time, Rockport resident Grace Nelson thought she had seen devastation before. The 25-year nurse had spent years in the Peace Corps delivering aid around the world in the 1970s, including in war-torn northern Africa. But, she said what she saw in Haiti was something far different. —Corpus Christi Caller TImes, 04/26/10 More »
A new study on nurse staffing levels was hailed by the California Nurses Association on Tuesday as proof that the state's nursing-ratio law is saving lives. If similar laws were enacted in such states as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the number of patient deaths in those states could be reduced by as much as 14 percent, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Health Services Research. —Sacramento Bee, 04/21/10 More »
The new health insurance reform package took a few steps toward increasing access to insurance and controlling costs, argues National Nurses United spokesman Chuck Idelson, but it did little to improve quality of care, one of the major challenges facing would-be reformers. But research published today in the journal HSR (Health Services Research) concludes that increasing the number of nurses in a hospital can do a lot to boost the chances that patients will survive–and to encourage experienced nurses to stick with the job at a time when many hospitals suffer from nurse shortages and high turnover. —In These Times, 04/20/10 More »
California’s nurse-to-patient staffing law reduces deaths from common surgeries, allows nurses to spend more time with patients and helps hospitals retain nurses, a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania concludes. California’s landmark law requires minimum nurse-to-patient ratios for specific units in all general acute-care hospitals. It was signed in 1999, but ratios were phased in from 2004 through 2008 —Sacramento Business Journal, 04/20/10 More »
California's law limiting the number of patients that can be assigned to a nurse has resulted in fewer deaths and a belief among the state's nurses that they were able to provide better care, according to the first comprehensive evaluation of the landmark legislation. The study by the University of Pennsylvania, published today in the policy journal Health Services Research, compared deaths from common surgeries in California in 2006, two years after the law was enacted, to surgical deaths in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. —San Francisco Chronicle, 04/20/10 More »
Ten to 13 percent fewer surgical patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania would die if hospitals in those states had as many nurses as California law requires, according to a University of Pennsylvania study published Tuesday. —Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/20/10 More »
Giant paydays are back at UnitedHealth Group. Chief executive Stephen Hemsley pulled in $102 million in 2009, with $98.6 million coming from exercised stock options, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday. That’s the biggest payday at the Minnetonka-based health insurer since 2006, when former chief Dr. William McGuire collected $127 million. —Bloomberg News, 04/15/10 More »
"Take me to General" is a reference to San Joaquin General Hospital that a local police officer or firefighter might make if they were critically injured. The facility's reputation is that strong, according to nurses who work there. But that slogan could become a distant memory in a few months if county officials and hospital administrators move forward with a recommendation to eliminate its emergency neurotrauma center for head and spinal injuries. —Stockton Record, 04/13/10 More »
