Nurses Protest Inhumane Care at Montefiore Med Ctr. Fri Feb 28th @11AM

NYSNA will be holding a rally to protest the inhumane medical conditions at 110 East 210th Street Montefiore Medical Center tomorrow, Friday, February 28th @11AM.

My mother had been a chronic asthmatic and consequently frequented many an emergency room of our local hospital, Jewish Memorial, that had undoubtedly saved my mother's life time and again. I say this because a cousin of mine died of asthma in his thirties as a result of not getting the medical care that he needed in time. My mother lived to be 88 years of age. Unfortunately, Jewish Memorial Hospital, a vital resource to the upper Manhattan community, closed in 1982.

I reflect on my mother's and cousin's health outcomes because they might have visited Montefiore Hospital one time or another (since we had all lived in the Bronx), and it is with horror that I have heard about the inhumane care people are receiving there, simply for want of hospital beds.

Recently, the NYC Poor People's Campaign met with members of the New York State Nurses Association to discuss the conditions at Montefiore Hospital and the ever-growing worsening of medical conditions, not because there aren't enough funds, but because the management of the facility continues to reduce the number of beds, negatively impacting the level of care for its patients.

Because there are not enough beds in the ER, they have come up with a new method of treating patients called "the vertical ER," where patients are being made to sit in chairs when they should be in a bed (with half of the patients in the ER sitting in chairs), or worse yet, they have been placed in a public hallway between buildings, with no restroom access, and without privacy while having intimate examinations—such as rectal, etc. (with overhead cameras). Patients that need ICU care are sometimes being placed on floors for general care, where the facilities in those units are not dedicated to this type of care, and patients are not receiving the quality of care that they require. This impacts the nursing staff since they are being asked to provide intensive care for patients when they are not trained to provide that kind of care, again endangering the patient and forcing nurses to provide inadequate care. Many nurses have quit because their conscience won't allow them to work under such conditions. There are also patients being admitted to the floors, where they are just in the hallways, again with no restroom and lights constantly on, not allowing them to adequately rest. This type of medical care is the kind that one would find in a time of war, where you give them the best you can with what you have.

The Bronx is not a war zone.

But there is a war for the right to quality healthcare at Montefiore Medical Center that the New York State Nurses Association is fighting for its patients. The majority of whom are people of color, many immigrants, and most receiving Medicaid. Montefiore recently purchased Westchester Medical Center, and the patients there receive a better level of care, with most of their patients having private insurance.

The sad truth is the cost of adding the beds that are required to provide quality care for these patients would be minimal. The real culprit is that the hospital is undergoing a restructuring, with funds being siphoned off to open up specialty care units that are more profitable than providing care for those that need medical care in their own community. https://montefioreeinsteinnow.....

Another dangerous Montefiore medical trend is discharging patients to go home without providing the needed "step down care," a term that means care that one would need after a major medical procedure before going home. This type of care ensures that the patient has adequate time and the professional medical care for them to fully recover. Montefiore Home Healthcare (the first hospital-based home health care, established in 1945) nurses are seeing more and more patients having to return to Montefiore because of complications occurring once they are home. Complications that could have been avoided had they been afforded this much-needed "step-down care." This is tantamount to medical butchery, putting patients under threat of dying from these complications. This isn't medical care; this is medical Russian roulette, with the players in the game having no other option than to use this medical facility because there is no other for them.

A hospital's main function is to serve the people in its community with quality medical care, but the bottom line is that Montefiore is putting patients lives at risk by cutting corners for the poorest of its patients, with the object of cycling through as many patients as it can, maximizing its profit.

Doctors take the "Hippocratic Oath," which includes "first, do no harm," with this principle guiding their medical decisions, and CEOs and boards of hospitals should be made to take this same oath.

About the author:
Raquel Irizarry is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia School of Social Work. She is an activist, a writer, a minister, and the lead facilitator of a Brain Training program for adults with early to mid-stage memory loss (having trained at Brooklyn Methodist Presbyterian Hospital Neurosciences Dept.). She is a former member of the UCC Metropolitan Association Board of Directors and is currently part of their Social Justice Committee and is a member of the NYS/NYC Coordinating Committees for the Poor People's Campaign (A National Call for Moral Revival).