Strike Schedule Announced For Lower Bucks Hospital Nurses

BRISTOL TOWNSHIP, PA —The strike is still on.

About 240 nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township and Suburban Community Hospital in Norristown are expected to strike Friday through Tuesday, said Megan Othersen Gorman, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.

The strike is expected to begin at the Bristol Township-based hospital at 7 a.m., the union said.

“We were planning to strike to call out Prime for not valuing nurse retention and therefore patient care,” says ICU nurse and co-president of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital Shirley Crowell, RN, a 32-year veteran of Lower Bucks Hospital. “It was always for our patients and will continue to be. We’ll be picketing for our patients and the critical care services they need and deserve.”

Gorman said that PASNAP has been in "contentious contract bargaining" with Prime Healthcare for months with no indication at any point from the management of their hospitals’ impending sale.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Tuesday that a Los Angeles investment bank circulated a note that three hospitals were for sale. The details from the bank match Prime Healthcare’s three Philadelphia-area hospitals, but it did not name them specifically, Levittown Now reported.

"The real fight, it is now clear, centers on the very existence of their hospitals," the union said.

Gorman said that the report stated that Prime Healthcare is planning to sell all three hospitals – Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton, Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol, and Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia.

Prime Healthcare is a for-profit hospital company based in California that operates 45 hospitals and 300 outpatient facilities in 14 states with nearly 50,000 employees.

"Prime Healthcare’s mission is to always do what’s best for our communities and patients," said Elizabeth Nikels, Prime Healthcare's vice president of communications and public relations in a statement to Patch Wednesday. "We do not comment on strategic merger and acquisition initiatives."

If Prime’s hospitals are sold and converted to behavioral health facilities, the effects on their patient communities will be dramatic and devastating, PASNAP said. Ambulance response times will increase, patients will be transported farther and farther away for emergency services, nurses and healthcare professionals will lose their jobs, and the basic medical services provided at these institutions —the services Pennsylvania families have relied on for decades —will cease.

“Prime’s motto – ‘Saving Hospitals, Saving Jobs, Saving Lives’ – is a flat-out lie,” says former Suburban General Nurses’ Association member Carrie Waltz, RN, a behavioral health nurse at Suburban until Prime closed the unit on the eve of her 15th anniversary at the hospital.

Lower Bucks Hospital spokeswoman Michelle Aliprantis told Patch earlier this week that the hospital has continued to "bargain in good faith with the PASNAP leadership to reach an agreement in the best interests of our hospital, employees, and, most importantly, those we serve."

She said that proposals were delivered to the union that would increase wages and provide a valuable healthcare plan, maintain important benefits, and be competitive with other hospitals in the market.

The nurses have been working without a contract since their previous three-year contract ended Oct. 12.

In late October, nurses picketed the hospital to protest the staff shortages.

“Prime came into this area in 2016 with the promise that they were going to rebuild the network and offer excellent, high-quality healthcare to the medically needy population of Norristown,” says Suburban ICU nurse Shannan Giambrone, RN, a 23-year veteran of the hospital and co-president of the Suburban General Nurses’ Association, the PASNAP local there.

“Since then, they’ve cut critical services and jobs [Prime closed Suburban’s behavioral health unit in late September and laid off the nurses who staffed it; previously, they had closed a cardiac pulmonary unit and a medical/surgical unit]. They’ve refused to staff our hospital safely for optimal patient care. And now they are planning to abandon us and our community completely,” she said.

The strike schedule is as follows:

Picketing will occur daily at both Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

There will be no picketing on Christmas. Picketing is only at Suburban Community Hospital on Tuesday.

During their strikes, the nurses will hold a holiday toy and coat drive for Bucks County Toys for Tots, the New Falls Road Red Cross Homeless Shelter, and the Laurel House for Domestic Abuse.