One nurse manager at Mount Sinai, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her job, described conditions over the past two days that she felt had been dangerous for patients. She said that managers had been told that more temporary travel nurses would be hired to help cover for the striking nurses but that many of them apparently did not show up and that the working conditions for those filling in were not sustainable.
Across the hospital, nursing managers have been pressed into service as floor nurses, even those who have not dealt directly with patients for a long time, she said. Some don’t know how to use all the equipment, so they are leaning heavily on the travel nurses who are there, she said, and the travel nurses are not familiar with all of the equipment, either.
Both hospitals originated from 19th-century Jewish philanthropic efforts, and both have undertaken breakneck expansion efforts over the past decade. But they are very different institutions.
Facing Central Park, Mount Sinai draws many patients from both East Harlem and the Upper East Side, but also from elsewhere in the city. More patients have commercial insurance, rather than government-sponsored Medicaid, which means that the hospital is paid better for each patient than hospitals in other boroughs, where more patients tend to have lower-reimbursing Medicaid.
A decade ago, Mount Sinai merged with another network of hospitals that included Beth Israel and the two campuses of St. Luke’s Roosevelt, emerging as one of the largest hospital systems in the city. The strike affects only the main Mount Sinai campus.
Montefiore, the largest hospital system in the Bronx, has tried to emphasize that its financial position is very different from those of other hospitals negotiating with the nurses’ union. There are strikes at three campuses, including the Moses campus, its main site. Medicaid patients outnumber those with commercial insurance by two to one. In a statement last week, a Montefiore vice president, Joe Solmonese, noted that the system had lost $200 million last year, while some of the major hospital systems negotiating with the nurses’ union were running at a profit.
But Montefiore has also expanded over the last decade, acquiring several hospitals in Westchester County and the lower Hudson Valley. More recently, job postings at Montefiore have indicated that it is planning to open “a concierge/executive medicine” service, based at Hudson Yards, a pricey neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side, in search of more patients with commercial insurance.