LAPEER – More than 100 registered nurses from McLaren Lapeer Region and community members rallied Monday to demand that hospital CEO Bart Buxton fix the chronic understaffing that can put their patients’ safety at risk. The nurses want to be able to provide safe, quality care to every patient and have been asking the administration to solve serious nurse staffing problems for months.

The measure responds to efforts by hospital networks to cut needed services in an effort to boost profits even though the DPH has deemed these services to be essential for the communities served by those hospitals. Nurses and other advocates for access to needed health care services will testify, including a nurse from North Adams Regional Hospital, which has announced a plan to shutter the hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit, pediatric unit and critical care unit.

Registered Nurses who work at John Muir Mount Diablo Hospital in Concord have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that nurses say will provide for additional patient care improvements as well as securing nurses’ health coverage. The settlement, reached Wednesday, covers more than 700 RNs who are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. The settlement will go before RNs for ratification in membership meetings scheduled for October 1.

Registered nurses from Northern California Kaiser Permanente facilities will pay a visit to a Kaiser recruitment event in Sacramento this afternoon, September 17 to bring a message to the HMO giant and doctors it is trying to enlist – stop cutting care by pushing nurses and patients out of the hospital.

In a stunning rebuke to MedStar Washington Hospital Center management, an administrative law judge ruled last week that Washington Hospital Center management broke federal labor law when it refused to provide information about hospital staffing patterns and patient safety survey information to registered nurses.