Nurses concerned with care as Tenet talks $$$

pickledpepperRN · Jul 10, 2003

Tenet talking finance while nurses concern is their patients. Here the patients are newborn babies. I doubt this spokesman for the company knows about neonatal intensive care.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/business/10CARE.html

July 10, 2003

Tenet Says S.E.C. Upgrading Inquiry Into Its Finances

By ANDREW POLLACK

LOS ANGELES, July 9-Tenet Healthcare said today that it was being formally investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, adding to a growing list of investigations and lawsuits the company is facing. ..(paragraphs deleted)

Tenet also continues to face labor problems.

Today, several nurses at its Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, Calif., held a news conference outside the hospital gates to complain that the nursery and the neonatal intensive-care unit were understaffed, in violation of state regulations.

"It's potentially dangerous for you to deliver a child here," said Sara Davenport, a nurse in the neonatal care unit. She and other nurses said they had complained to the hospital's management, to no avail. The nurses said the situation has been like that for about two years and has not worsened noticeably in the last few months as Tenet's earnings have deteriorated.

The news conference was organized by the California Nurses Association, which is trying to unionize the nurses at Centinela and other Tenet hospitals in the state. Tenet, in hopes of achieving labor peace, reached an agreement in May with two other unions to represent workers in its hospitals. But the nurses association opposes that agreement and wants to represent the nurses.

Harry Anderson, a spokesman for Tenet, denied that staffing was inadequate, saying the charge was part of the union's effort to use "every means at hand in an effort to advance their organizing effort in a very competitive environment."