Several dozen unionized Stroger Hospital employees descended on a Cook County board meeting Wednesday, expressing their displeasure with President Toni Preckwinkle’s pension-reform plan, which is expected to surface soon in Springfield. As county hospital workers waited their turn to address the board, the echoes of an overflow crowd could be heard chanting “save our pensions” from a hallway outside the boardroom. But by the time they were allowed to take the podium, Preckwinkle had ducked out of the meeting to attend a separate event. She later returned after the hospital workers were gone.

National Nurses United has announced a campaign that aims to highlight the dangers of using "unproven" medical technology,Healthcare IT News reports. NNU was founded in 2009 and includes about 185,000 members representing every state (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 5/27).

The California Nurses Association and the vast number of health care workers in California are in support of Assembly Bill 2616 introduced by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner earlier this year. If passed into law, AB 2616 would establish a rebuttable presumption in the workers' compensation system for acute care hospital employees, providing direct patient care, who contract a methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) skin infection. Existing law provides that an injury sustained by an employee, arising out of the course and scope of their employment, is compensable under the workers' compensation system. However, what constitutes an injury arising out of the course and scope of employment is often the source of litigation.

Members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the National Nurses United have been urging state legislators to pass a bill they introduced last year, the Hospital Profit Transparency and Fairness Act. The HPTFA would limit excessive revenues and executive compensation for nonprofit, state-assisted hospitals, and would require hospitals to publicly disclose their financing, including their tax-sheltered offshore accounts. While health care costs are the financial ruin of many families, hospitals are able to boost revenue in part by keeping offshore accounts, which are not subject to the rigors of taxation or regulatory oversight.