Unionized nurses in New York says a new state Health Department report illustrates their concern over staffing as contract negotiations with Albany Medical Center remain at a standstill.
Nurses organized with the New York State Nurses Association have been working at Albany Med without a contract since August 1st.
A primary complaint from the unionized nurses is staffing. They claim the hospital is putting patients at risk and contributing to long wait times. The hospital maintains that quality of care remains high.
Amid the standoff, this week the nurses acquired a state Department of Health report on a series of violations at the hospital. The 25-page DOH report is based on interviews with members of the hospital's Clinical Staffing Committee and frontline staff, documents and survey observations.
NYSNA nurses held a press conference outside Albany Medical Center on New Scotland Avenue Tuesday.
Jaimie Alaxanian is a member of the NYSNA bargaining unit and the Albany Med Clinical Staffing Committee. She says the health department document supports NYSNA’s claim that Albany Med has a staffing crisis.
“The report spells out in black and white what nurses have been saying all along. There is a staffing crisis. Albany Med and hospital leadership are refusing to adequately address it. They continue to hide the truth because it is ugly,” she said.
The report completed by DOH dated July 25th found 480 staffing violations, including 32 in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, during a six-month period between October 2023 and April 2024. The violations represent 2.2 percent of all shifts in that timeframe, according to Albany Medical Center CEO Dennis Mckenna. The report describes the violations as failure to “assign personnel to each patient care unit in accordance with their adopted clinical staffing plans.”
Albany Medical Center received the report in August while NYSNA filed a Freedom of Information request to see it.
Alaxanian accuses the hospital of withholding the full report.
“They were told to share it with just the staffing committee. The staffing committee did see Albany Med’s version of the Department of Health’s report and I guess they didn’t want us to see the actual report because it is not good. It validates what we’ve been saying, it validates that there is a crisis going on in here and that we need more nurses,” she said.
Contract negotiations continued as recently as Monday. Jen Bejo is the local bargaining unit’s president. She says the bargaining unit was hopeful that Albany Med management would be ready to negotiate in good faith.
“Unfortunately, this was not the case. As they have many times in this nearly yearlong process management refused to listen to our concerns and the myriad issues we face as frontline nurses. Chief among our concerns is our employer’s refusal to acknowledge and meaningfully address the ongoing staffing and patient care at Albany Medical Center,” she said.
Albany Med spokesman Mark Markham tells WAMC in a statement that the items identified in the report date back as far as 16 months and “at no point during that time was patient care ever compromised, and quality care continued.”
Markham says the hospital hired more than 300 nurses in 2024 and the registered nurse turnover rate at the facility is 3 percent less than the national average. He says that the hospital agrees with NYSNA that nurse recruitment is critical to its mission.
State Assemblyman Phil Steck of the 110th District joined NYSNA’s demonstration Tuesday.
The Democrat says the hospital’s wait times adversely affect his district’s emergency medical services.
“We have excellent EMS in the communities that I represent. But when an ambulance from Guilderland comes down here and has to wait three hours for their patient to be even brought into the ER that’s a serious problem because that’s time where they cannot attend to other crises in the town of Guilderland and that would be true for Colonie as well,” he said.
Bejo says NYSNA nurses will continue to fight.
“Until we secure a contract that respects nurses, abides by New York State staffing laws and ensures Capital Region residents have access to the safe quality patient care they deserve,” she said.
For now, contract negotiations are gridlocked.
By way of disclosure, Albany Medical Center is a WAMC underwriter.
