Nurses Say Hospital Cuts Will Cripple Patient Care

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow SOUNDING ALARM TO PUBLIC: This Nurse handing out leaflets at Bellevue Hospital June 17 was part of a union effort to draw attention to the impact that cuts in clinics, primary care services and staffing agreed to by the Mayor and City Council under a budget deal announced a night earlier would have on patient care.

City nurses protested outside of five hospitals June 17 against budget cuts to the Health and Hospitals Corporation that they said would destabilize patient care and flood emergency rooms if enacted.

Leafleting outside of Bellevue Hospital and Harlem Hospital in Manhattan, Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, Lincoln Medical in The Bronx and Queens Hospital, members of the New York State Nurses Association said that cuts to outpatient clinics and primary care had to be reversed.

Says 400 Jobs on Line

"The issue for us is that the Mayor's budget is cutting health-care, HHC is facing budget cuts, it's reducing its staff. We're talking 400 total layoffs at HHC, or reduction through attrition," said Leon Bell, a NYSNA labor relations representative, outside Bellevue Hospital.

Mr. Bell said that the cuts, coupled with Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to create a Tier 5 pension system and a recent deal with city unions imposing new medical co-pays would make it harder to recruit nurses for HHC facilities. "There's already a disparity in wages between what city nurses make and what they're making in the private sector, and chipping away in this way is only going to make it worse," he contended.

While only 15 HHC nurses have thus far been identified for layoffs, NYSNA said that the cuts to programs like school dental clinics and psychiatric outpatient facilities would mean an erosion of primary care, pushing patients to ignore health problems until they had to go to the hospital.

"In terms of what it provides, it's cost-effective. The most-efficient means of decreasing the overall cost of health-care is to support primary care," said Anne Bove, a 31-year veteran at Bellevue. "Once a person gets into a tertiary care system, that's the most-costly means of providing health-care. Not to say we should be closing beds in hospitals, but the thing is, in order to be cost-efficient, primary care has to be the focus."

Fears Mayor Will Cut More

Ms. Bove said that she was concerned that cuts made in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget would be built upon in future years. "I know that the City Council really fought hard to keep those child dental clinics in place. But the Mayor said that even if they put the money in, he wasn't going to spend it for it," she said.

Mr. Bell contended that the total savings realized through the clinic cuts were not worth the money. "The total savings here is $26 million, which is really a drop in the ocean," he said. "We have already seen a decline in the numbers of nurses, because of the hiring freeze and attrition. . . at some point, it's going to have a bigger impact, setting aside the possibility of bigger cuts next year."