Nurses at UPMC Western Psychiatric hospital in Oakland are sounding the alarm about a staffing crisis and closed beds at the facility. Dozens of hospital workers represented by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania held a rally outside the hospital Monday, on the eve of contract negotiations with UPMC scheduled for Tuesday.
John Hobdy, a registered nurse at Western Psych, said nurses are often responsible for 14 patients each during the night shift. But if help is needed in another part of the hospital, he said one nurse has been left with as many as 27 patients with acute mental illness.
“That’s completely exhausting for nurses and unfair for our patients,” Hobdy said. “UPMC needs to invest in retaining, recruiting and supporting nurses so we can get people the help they urgently need.”
Hobdy said he works with patients who require feeding tubes and regular bathing as well as patients who are experiencing substance withdrawals. “One mistake with these patients can lead to disaster,” he said.
He said more nurses are needed to ensure patients have access to adequate care.
Western Psych is the largest behavioral health facility in Western Pennsylvania. Nurses there treat patients ranging from children to seniors with diagnoses including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, eating disorders, substance use disorders, anxiety, depression and autism.
The facility has 263 beds and specialized floors, but workers said Monday that UPMC has closed dozens of beds on every unit due to understaffing. According to SEIU Healthcare, one-third of beds are closed because there aren’t enough nurses to staff them.
UPMC declined to answer questions about exactly how many beds have been closed and how it determines whether to reopen them. But in a statement, the company said it increased patient occupancy at Western Psych by 14% since early August.
“Our hospital, our crisis services, and our ambulatory and community services continue to address mental health needs that deserve and have our full attention,” UPMC said in a statement.
But workers Monday argued UPMC should do more to open all of the beds in the facility to ensure the community has more access to specialized care.
Chris Hunter, a nurse at the hospital and president of the local SEIU Healthcare chapter, said without more staff to open more beds, patients will have to seek care at other facilities.
“We know that there are people in the community that need help. They need support. And this may be the place that they think to find that support and they can't get it here,” he said. “It's frustrating for them. It's frustrating for us.”
State data shows that about a third of Pennsylvanian adults have a mental illness or substance use disorder, which is higher than the national average.
Amy Kenny, a staff nurse at Western Psych, has been with the hospital for 37 years. As the facility’s most senior nurse, she said she’s had a front-row seat to Pennsylvania’s worsening “mental health emergency.” She said the crisis is compounded by burned out psych nurses who leave for less dangerous positions.
“I've stayed in this job out of a commitment to provide compassionate mental health care to our most underserved population, many of whom have no voice to advocate for themselves,” she said. “Unfortunately, few nurses stay as long as I have in mental health.”
Kenny said her son left his nursing position at Western Psych after barricading himself from a violent patient during a shift. Kenny said the situation was exacerbated by unit consolidation, where patients from various specialized units get placed together due to staffing issues.
She said she’s watched many nurses “walk across the street and get more money with fewer assaults,” at other medical centers.
“We take patients from other hospitals that can't be managed there. And we do therapies that other hospitals don't have,” she said. “We have the toughest-to-treat patients and we're happy to treat them. That's what we do.”
Kenny pointed to recent contracts negotiated by nurses at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn and Allegheny General hospitals as the blueprint for what nurses at Western Psych should fight for. Kenny said the wage increases and new staffing standards should be adopted by UPMC.
Nurses were joined by several mental health and social work researchers who illustrated the need for Western Psych in Western Pennsylvania.
“In this county, the majority of people who are involuntarily committed are routed to or through Western Psych and there is an ethical imperative to handle civil commitments with the highest standard of care,” said Nev Jones, a University of Pittsburgh professor of social work and a mental health researcher. “Without adequate nurse staffing, we will inevitably fall short."
Politicians also came out to call on UPMC to bargain with nurses including Pittsburgh City Councilor Erika Strassburger and Pennsylvania state Reps. Dan Frankel and Dan Miller, who chairs the state Democratic Mental Health Caucus.
Miller and Strassburger said they stood in solidarity with Western Psych workers and described the important role facilities like it play in society.
“When people who need Western Psych find themselves turned away due to inadequate staffing, it can be the beginning of a downward spiral that we see play out all too often on our streets,” Strassburger said.
Rep. Frankel, who is the state representative for Oakland, took direct shots at UPMC’s executive private jet and payments made to a retired CEO.
“Imagine being one of those nurses on their lunch break and scrolling past a headline about UPMC's lease of a $50 million corporate jet,” he said. “Or reading about the $17.8 million paid to former UPMC CEO Jeff Romoff a full year after he retired.”
Frankel said Western Psych is “the very definition of the community benefit that nonprofits agree to provide” in lieu of taxes — a thinly veiled reference to an ongoing property tax battle between the health care provider and the City of Pittsburgh which has filed to overturn the tax-exempt status of several UPMC properties.
“They need to have a commitment to fulfill their promise as a purely public charity under state law that provides them with tax exempt benefits by continuing to invest in these services that may not provide the margins that other services do, but that serve our community and the needs of our citizens,” Frankel said.
Western Psych nurses are scheduled to meet with UPMC Tuesday and Friday to negotiate their next contract. The current contract ends Sept. 30.
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