The management of Huntington Memorial Hospital (HMH) would have the Pasadena community believe that it is a great hospital and that current efforts by its registered nurses to form a labor union in affiliation with the California Nurses Association (CNA) will lead to ruin. It may be hard for management to admit, but neither claim could be further from the truth.

Sutter Health has agreed to pay $71,275 in fines issued by Cal/OSHA after an investigation found safety violations for handling patients with suspected airborne diseases at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland.

As NPR has been reporting in its Injured Nurses series, nursing employees suffer more back and arm injuries than just about any other occupations, but studies show that hospitals can reduce the number of injuries dramatically if they buy special equipment to move patients and conduct intensive training to teach the staff how to use it.

Prime Healthcare’s decision to drop its bid to buy six Daughters of Charity hospitals, citing strict conditions set by Attorney General Kamala Harris, should prompt discussion about basic standards for all California hospitals. Harris established a new bar for how all hospitals should operate, and it ought to become the industry yardstick.

Less than five months after the successful launch of Sonoma County’s newest hospital, nurses at the Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital say they’re ready to strike over the staffing shortages and changes to their medical benefits. Last week, California Nurses Association, which represents 426 registered nurses at Sutter in Santa Rosa, announced that its nurses had voted overwhelmingly in support of authorizing their negotiating team to call a strike if necessary.