BY: SUZANNE KING
Registered nurses at two HCA-owned Kansas City hospitals get “substantial” pay raises under new three-year contracts ratified in October.
National Nurses United, the union representing registered nurses at Research Medical Center in Kansas City and Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, said in a press release that the pay bump will make it easier to recruit and keep nurses.
Heavy nurse turnover at the two for-profit hospitals was one of the nurse union’s top complaints when it began contract negotiations in March. The union said 150 nurses left jobs at Research in 2023, while 89 left Menorah. Sometimes, the union said, Research and Menorah weren’t scheduling enough nurses each shift for safe patient care.
Nurses, whose previous contract expired May 31, had rallied on Meyer Boulevard outside Research calling on HCA to “put patients over profit.”
HCA Healthcare, which owns 180 hospitals across the country and reported profits of more than $5 billion in 2023, called its staffing “safe and appropriate.”
The company said it is pleased the new Kansas City contracts have been ratified.
“As we indicated all along,” HCA spokeswoman Christine Hamele said in an emailed statement, “our goal was to reach an agreement that was fair for our colleagues and maintained the flexibility that allows us to operate in an ever-changing healthcare environment, and this contract meets those goals.”
The union said new contracts would improve patient care and working conditions. In addition to pay raises, the union said, the contracts include:
- A new program to ensure that nurses can take meal and rest breaks during shifts.
- Measures to ensure that nurses will be temporarily reassigned or “float” to units of the hospital similar to their specialty.
- The right for staff to use preferred names and pronouns on name badges.
National Nurses United represents almost 1,000 nurses at Research and Menorah, part of the 10,000 nurses it represents around the country.
In 2024, union contracts expired with nurses at 17 HCA-owned facilities in six states. The union said that nurses at some of those hospitals had authorized strikes, but no walkouts happened. This month, the hospital company has come to agreement with nurses at four facilities, including the two in Kansas City.
A growing number of nurses, doctors and other health care workers have turned to unions in recent years. Asking hospitals to schedule more health care workers on every shift is often at the top of their list of demands.
The pandemic revealed vulnerabilities in U.S. health care, including scarce staffing and difficult working conditions at hospitals across the country. That drove more unionization.
In 2023, about half of the country’s 33 major work stoppages — defined as an event involving at least 1,000 workers and lasting for at least one shift — occurred in health care.
And nursing strikes are on the rise, according to Nurse Together, a website that focuses on the profession. The group counted nine nurse strikes in 2020, 14 in 2021, 16 in 2022 and 30 last year. It said that 2024 is on track to have even more strikes.
This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.