Cape Cod Visiting Nurses Reach Deal, Avoiding Strike

CAPE COD, MA — Cape Cod Healthcare officials and the Visiting Nurse Association of Cape Cod Healthcare have reached an agreement on contract updates, avoiding a potential strike for the visiting nurses.

Union representatives from the Massachusetts Nurses Association, who are representing the VNAs on Cape Cod, said negotiations were ongoing since Feb. 28 with nurses "trying to win important contract language that will improve nurses’ ability to work safely, effectively, and efficiently while providing the best and safest care possible to Cape Cod residents."

The nurses’ key concerns included CCHC’s "inability to retain and recruit nurses" because of low wages, improved patient assignments and adjustments to contract language specific to nurses delivering at-home care on the Cape.

This agreement, hospital officials said, "includes fair and significant wage increases offered by the VNA over the past several months."

It also makes the wage rates "among the highest in the state for home health agencies," officials noted.

The CCHC VNA nurses care for patients across 1,000 square miles, and those patients have varying needs.

The agency stated that the average home visit is 42 minutes, but this does not account for travel, patient acuity and documentation completion. Nor does it account for all the ancillary things nurses do around each visit.