Hospital and health system job growth looks strong, Connecticut sees its first hospital strike in 25 years, and a hospital worker convicted of infecting patients is sentenced in New Hampshire.
Healthcare Employment Shows Stronger than Average Gains
Back in September, jobs in healthcare were growing at a less than impressive rate, with only 6,000 new jobs created. Two months later, the healthcare job market has sprung to life, with over 28,000 healthcare jobs being created in the month of November.
November's jump marks an improvement over the rise in October (15,000 jobs created), and easily eclipses the monthly average for 2013, which has come in around 19,000 jobs created per month. The 28,000 jobs created is more in line with the 27,000 jobs per month that the healthcare industry was averaging in 2012. It's also the highest spike between months since the 41,000 job increase that occurred in August.
In terms of specifics, the biggest jump came in ambulatory healthcare services (+26,300) home healthcare services (+12,000) and offices of physicians (+7,000). Among the smaller boosts were hospitals, which only saw a 1,200 increase in jobs in November. While there was a notable drop occurred in nursing care facilities (-4000), nursing and residential care facilities saw a slight bump (+900).
Lawrence and Memorial Hospital Lockout Continues
Connecticut's first hospital strike in 25 years is entering its second week.
No organization ever wants to go through a strike and that goes double for strikes that occur around the holidays. But that's the case at the Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, CT. Nearly 800 nurses and technicians walked out of the hospital on November 28th.
The strike was only supposed to last until November 30th, but when the striking workers attempted to return to their jobs, they were locked out and barred from entering, as the hospital had promised. Replacement workers have been brought in to work while the two sides continue to negotiate.
The two dominant issues have been job security and patient safety. Initial concern from workers came from charges stated that Lawrence and Memorial had been laying off workers and shifting work from their hospital to shell corporations.
The hospital presented its "best and final offer" on December2. It was rejected. The two sides will meet with a federal mediator Tuesday. In a statement, the hospital said, " As we have for 15 previous sessions, we are ready to negotiate in good faith in an effort to reach a mutually agreeable contract that will return our employees to what they do best – taking care of the patients in our community."
In the meantime, compensation has entered the picture, but not in the usual way.
New Hampshire Hepatitis C Worker Sentenced
The sordid tale of serial hospital infector David Kwiatkowski finally came to a close last week. Kwiatkowski was sentenced to 39 years in prison after infecting 45 patients around the country with Hepatitis C.
The story has been told over and over. Kwiatkowski was a traveling radiology tech and a drug addict who injected himself with syringes filled with painkillers intended for patients. To avoid being caught, he'd refill the tainted syringes with saline. That's how vulnerable patients were infected with the incurable disease.
Now Kwiatkowski is behind bars, but the pain for his victims will remain forever.
The ordeal was highly publicized and brought a lot of attention to how hospital employees and contract workers are screened. In the wake of Kwiatkowski's scheme being uncovered at New Hampshire's Exeter Hospital, the Granite State is starting to crack down on drug using employees. After issuing zero suspensions in 2011, both the New Hampshire Board of Nursing and Board of Pharmacy increased their amounts of emergency suspensions over the last two years.
Taking down drug-abusing employees has been a slower process in other states. A special report on nurses in Minnesota showed that since 2010, one hundred and twelve nurses who were caught stealing narcotics, forging prescriptions, or working under the influence were allowed to keep their licenses to practice medicine.
And nurses aren't the only ones abusing substances. A study recently released shows that doctors in certain specialties also suffer from substance abuse, with some of those instances resulting in fatalities.
While an end-all solution would be nice, New Hampshire is taking a step in the right direction by ramping up its use of emergency suspensions.