Hard-won contracts for private-hospital nurses could tempt talent from public hospitals, nursing homes

BY JACQUELINE NEBER

Registered nurse Sonia Lawrence is worried about what the outcome of the New York State Nurses Association strike at Montefiore and Mount Sinai Hospital last month will mean for public-sector nurses.

“The private-sector nurses did get a lucrative contract that has become the envy of most people in nursing. They set the bar really high,” said Lawrence, who works at New York City Health + Hospitals/ Lincoln and is the NYSNA president of the H+H executive committee. “We [the public-sector nurses] have always done more with less. This is a wake-up call—nurses find that it’s now more beneficial to work in the private sector than it is to work in the public sector.”

Before private-sector nurses won contracts that included a 19% wage increase over three years, new staffing ratios and enforcement parameters, public-sector NYSNA nurses made approximately $14,000 less per year than their private-sector counterparts, Lawrence said.

With the terms of the new con- tracts, the difference could be more than $19,000, she said, potentially incentivizing nurses to switch sectors.

Her concerns are emblematic of a fear rippling across the city’s health care sector: That the more lucrative contracts private NYSNA nurses won could lure nurses away from parts of the sector, such as disability services, nursing homes, public hospitals and even schools.

Winifred Schiff is the chief executive the Midtown-based InterAgency Council of Developmental Disabilities Agencies that oversees 150 member organizations that provide services to New Yorkers with intellectual and developmental disabilities downstate. Many New Yorkers with disabilities, whether in group homes or in programs, need nurses for medical treatment or medication administration, with many depending on 24-hour nursing for their medical needs, she said.

Many disability service providers can only pay staff based on Medicaid reimbursement rates, and the sector has had difficulty attracting and retaining nurses for years because of low pay. That longstand- ing challenge can worsen.

“The combination of increased wages and benefits and especially the staffing ratios that the hospitals have agreed to will certainly result in hospitals recruiting our nurses,” Schiff said. “If they’re in recruitment mode . . . our nurses would probably jump to the hospitals now.”

Ripple effects

Patrick Paul, chief executive of the Anderson Center for Autism in Staatsburg, Dutchess County, said the outcome of the nurses strike could bleed into education. About 18 nurses provide residential and educational services to more than 300 students with autism at the center.

“Nursing is truly one of those fields where there’s always a ripple effect,” he said. “In general, all of the salaries [for nurses in other parts of the sector] would move up with whatever the salaries are in hospitals.”

Hospitals have always represented an opportunity for nurses to leave and make more money, he said, and New York’s omnipresent health care worker shortage pres-

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However, many of the center’s nurses have already worked in hospitals and come to the center specifically looking for a more stable, less intense role, potentially eliminating some competition.

Nursing home providers who depend on Medicaid reimbursements to pay staff are also concerned. Stuart Almer, chief executive of the Gur win Healthcare System on Long Island, said the industry has always lost staff to hospitals because of better pay, but now that problem has been worsened by staffing shortages.

“Retaining staff, that’s most challenging. And when hospitals are able to better compete in the market, that’s what makes it more difficult for us,” he added.

In light of these challenges, some providers have already retooled their benefits packages to attract and keep nurses. Almer said Gurwin, which operates two nursing home and rehabilitation facilities on Long Island, offers a free certi- fied nursing assistant training program and has doubled funding for hiring and recruitment bonuses. While the moves have helped attract more nurses, Almer is concerned they won’t be enough.

Meanwhile, disability service providers asked for an 8.5% cost-ofliving adjustment for direct support professionals, including nurses, to be included in the fiscal 2024 executive budget. Advocates also asked for a $4,000 wage enhancement for DSPs. Neither provision was offered in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget that was released last week.

Lawrence said about 9,000 H+H NYSNA nurses are seeking wage parity with their private-sector counterparts—the same percent wage increases.

“The only way we’re going to retain nurses in the public sector is by leveling the playing field,” Lawrence said.

Representatives from Montefiore and Mount Sinai Hospital, where NYSNA nurses went on strike for three days last month, declined to comment for this story. The NYSNA nurses’ contracts with H+H hospitals end March 2. ■