The Health Committee of the District of Columbia City Council will hold a hearing Friday on proposed legislation to require safer staffing for patients in District of Columbia hospitals. DC nurses and community leaders will be on hand urging the Council to act on a bill, the Patient Protection Act, introduced earlier this year by DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson with 10 of the 13 council members as co-sponsors.

Calling on Kaiser to Reverse Closure of Hospital in Manteca. Closure is part of pattern of HMO’s new model of care, limiting access to hospital and nursing care. On Monday, fifty seniors will travel from Manteca to Kaiser’s headquarters in downtown Oakland to protest the corporation’s withdrawal of vital services at Kaiser Hospital in Manteca. The seniors will bring photographs of their loved ones who have been harmed by Kaiser’s policy of cutting and denying services in Manteca and rerouting patients to Modesto and beyond.

Registered nurses and other care providers at ten Veterans Administration medical centers in New York, West Virginia, Illinois and Colorado were unpaid or underpaid during their last pay period ending October 25. The payroll errors occurred when the VA’s new payroll system, VATAS, went into effect in these states.

The Department of Public Health will hold a public hearing on Nov. 1 concerning a controversial plan by North Adams Regional Hospital to close its psychiatric, pediatric and critical care units -- programs that are essential for preserving the health care safety net for resident of Northern Berkshire County. The public hearing is part of the legal process NARH is required to go through prior to closing these units, which is designed to determine if these are essential services for patients in the community.

Registered nurses, pharmacists, social workers and other professional employees will be picketing in front of the five University of California Medical Centers located in Irvine, Los Angeles, Sacramento San Diego, and San Francisco Friday morning, November 1 to protest UC’s threat to implement take-away proposals against thousands of long serving employees. The research and technical units represented by University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America (UPTE-CWA) at UC voted by more than 92 percent to give the union strike authorization, after months of bargaining to beat back the employer’s proposals that include severe cuts to pay and benefits.