Registered nurses from a council of all nine St. Joseph Health system (SJH) hospitals will hold a press event Wednesday at St. Joseph of Orange hospital, at which they will outline their concerns with the proposed merger between Providence Health & Services and St. Joseph Health.

“This merger must guarantee our patients and community access to the top standard of care,” said Sharon Bryan, RN, of St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley. “On behalf of our patients, we stand in opposition to a merger that would do anything less.”

What:  St. Joseph Health RNs speak out on SJH/Providence merger
Where:  St. Joseph of Orange Hospital ER entrance
             Corner of Pepper and LaVita, Orange, CA 92868
When:  TODAY, Wednesday Sept. 30,  4 p.m.

Seeking to assure patients’ and nurses’ rights are not infringed during a merger, the nurses will hand deliver a letter addressed to SJH CEO Deborah Proctor, care of St. Joseph of Orange CEO Steve Moreau (an original of the letter will be delivered to Proctor in the following days). In the letter, nurses are asking for Proctor to address their concerns, including:

• Guaranteeing all SJH hospitals will remain open.
• Ensuring no discontinuation of services for patients and communities.
• Protecting the security of jobs, benefits and pay for nurses.
• Returning to SJH’s core values, throughout the merger, and upholding the values of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange—which put people above profit.
• Ceasing all actions intended to cause fear and intimidation of RNs organizing to join the California Nurses Association. (In recent years, the National Labor Relations Board has found its policies and practices unlawful.)

The proposed merger, announced in July, would create one of the largest Catholic hospital systems in the U.S. Providence currently operates 34 hospitals and 500 clinics in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington. St. Joseph Health runs 16 hospitals in California, New Mexico, and Texas.

Together, the new system would have an especially large footprint in California, and a near monopoly in some regions—exactly why nurses are concerned.

“As the two systems prepare to merge, it’s really important to ensure that nurses’ concerns are adequately addressed because this combined hospital system will be the only outlet for care in some regions,” said Susan Johnson, RN, of St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. “And as it stands, nurses have already been speaking out to hold St. Joseph Health accountable for putting people over profits.”

To that end, nurses recently released a new report on serious concerns that have arisen as SJH has shifted from the values of its founding Sisters—to corporate management concerned, nurses say, with maximizing revenue at the expense of patients, RNs, taxpayers, and its own stated principles.

Based on the experiences of registered nurses at SJH hospitals, and publicly available data, the report, “Falling From Grace: St. Joseph Health RNs Raise Ethical and Patient Care Concerns” (available online at SJHFallFromGrace.org) asserts that SJH and its hospitals have reaped millions in tax subsidies from California taxpayers, while providing among the lowest amount of charity care of any Catholic system—and invested patient care and tax subsidized funds into for-profit companies, including hedge funds in the Cayman Islands.

The report also chronicles a system-wide campaign to illegally restrict the rights of its RNs to organize a union to better advocate for their patients—a campaign for which SJH has been charged with scores of violations of federal law. The system has also imposed sweeping cuts in disability, medical leave, and retirement security on thousands of SJH employees, while paying exorbitant executive salaries and benefits.

“We are gathering at St. Joseph of Orange on Wednesday, on behalf of patients from all of the hospitals that we represent, to let SJH executives know that nurses are already concerned about deteriorating patient care conditions in SJH hospitals,” said Kerry Sweeny, RN, of St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. “We wrote this letter to Deborah Proctor to send a strong message that conditions must improve.”

Nurses say that they will carry copies of the letter back to their individual hospitals, to deliver to their own CEOs.

“Our patients include the most vulnerable members of our communities,” said Marlene Tucay, RN, of St. Joseph of Orange. “We will continue to stand up to ensure they receive top quality care, even as the merger takes place.”