May 5, 2011

Community Rally Noon Friday

“We provide quality patient care and we deserve quality healthcare”

Registered nurses today will mark the second day of a five-day strike at Children’s Hospital Oakland (CHO) with continued picketing and a noon rally where patients and community members will speak in support of the nurses fight to keep their decades long health plan that enables them to have their children cared for at the hospital.

The RNs voted for a five-day strike after the hospital presented major healthcare cuts that would make it prohibitively expensive for nurses to bring their children to get care at CHO. The proposed plan goes against the standard in the greater Bay Area, that has for decades offered RNs the option of affordable care for their families through their hospital’s Preferred Provider health plans, which applies to 19,000 nurses in private hospitals throughout the greater Bay Area.

“I have had many opportunities to work closer to home, but I love working at Children’s,” said Aday Godinez-Robinson, a pediatric intensive care unit nurse, living in Fairfield, who has worked at Children’s for 23 years and is a single mother of two children with chronic asthma. “We provide an expert level of pediatric care that is unparalleled to any other hospital that I have worked in my professional career, and I always felt secure having my children managed by my nurse and doctor colleagues. In light of threatened cost hikes for this plan, I moved to Kaiser as have many of my colleagues. I want my children cared for at the hospital I love.”

Ongoing picketing will occur in front of the hospital everyday from 6:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Children’s Hospital Oakland, 747 52nd St., Oakland

Events @ CHO

• Friday:  Children’s Nurse Rally—Noon
• Sunday: Mothers Day Brunch—11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.                      

 
Children's misleads media and public about it's true financial state

Data supplied by the Children's Hospital management itself to the U.S. Government and state agencies belies the hospital's claims of money woes, documenting instead a hospital with considerable resources.

According to the latest Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) quarterly data, CHO netted $18.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. Upon more detailed analysis of the hospital’s 2009 IRS form 990, Schedule D, the hospital made $18.4 million.

“It doesn’t make sense for the hospital to spend several millions of dollars for two strikes rather than settling with the nurses, said Wendy Bloom, an RN at the hospital and a member of the CNA nurse negotiating team. “The hospital has stated that it would save less than $1 million a year from its healthcare takeaways.”

The nurses have been working without a contract since July 13. The CNA nurse negotiating team has made itself available to resume talks, after management unilaterally cancelled the last bargaining session scheduled on Tuesday, April 26. The hospital has not responded to the nurses’ request to meet.