US hospitals sued in class action over nurse pay

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nurses backed by the biggest U.S. health-care union on Tuesday filed four class-action lawsuits against some of the biggest U.S. hospitals, including No. 1 chain HCA Inc., claiming they conspired to depress wages for nurses amid a national shortage.

The lawsuits, which also target the biggest U.S. Catholic hospital system, Ascension Health, charge the hospitals regularly discussed nurses' wages in meetings, over the telephone and in written surveys, in an effort to coordinate and suppress pay.

The suits, filed in federal courts in Chicago; Memphis, Tennessee; Albany, New York; and San Antonio, Texas, seek back compensation and legal costs totaling "hundreds of millions of dollars" under federal antitrust laws.


"We have HR (human resources) employees calling their counterparts at competitor hospitals, asking for and receiving detailed and current information about the wages these hospitals are paying their nurses," said Daniel Small, a partner at the Washington law firm representing the plaintiffs, which are seeking class-action status.

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You Go Nurses!!!

:shrug:

Which particular description these Corporations' actions fall under?
That's what the judge and jury are going to decide.

Personally, I suspect it's the latter. It has struck me as abit ODD
that the nation could spend so many years with a widely-recognized
Nursing Shortage while actual Nursing WAGES remain stagnant.

Adam Smith calls 'shenanigans' on that!

when I see nurses who drive 100 miles to work for $50 an hour for a degree that took them 2 years to get

not bashing nurses, but I don't think they are underpaid for the most part

And collusion, especially against labor, is particularly loathsome.

My fiance is a nurse. I find her wages, bonuses and such, to be amazing.

try a job where you can get sued and lose your license and your house... Get Aids and work 12 hours all night weekends and holidays taking care of sick people ... never get a lunch break...backbreaking workloads

and most nurses don't get paid $50 an hour... its more like 18-20 and hour

$43 / hr

I sit for my RN licensure test in one week. I know of what I speak. :hi:

I've seen many students be dazzled by the money only to find out its a horrible dangerous job...

When a patient jumps and you accidentally poke yourself with a needle ... and find out the patient has hepatitis C tell me how that 43 dollars an hour makes you happy...And you think it won't happen to me

But it does happen... and add if you are pregnant at the time...

How many jobs have that kinda liability??? And of course the Hospital tells you Its your poor technique that did it...

I see myself as a 'floor nurse' for at least two years. After that, if I get burned out I'll work up the food chain into management or consulting. I really love the job though so I hope that I don't get burned out like that. Additionally, I've done my homework. I'm picking the hospital with the highest employee satisfaction scores in the area. It's not perfect, but it's a nice place to work in my opinion.

its being hidden and they can't bring them in from foreign countries fast enough...

So God Bless these nurses in their lawsuit!!!

The patients that have TB or CMV and other diseases while administration says the nurses are over-reacting and should be fine....one told the nurse that the CMV diagnosis was still "pending" so it was OK for her to take the patient. Nice of them to take chances on someone else's baby!
We've had a number of pregnant nurses who have had to go on extended bedrest because of the physical wear and tear of the job. That can be financially a disaster for them because that eats up the sick/vacation hours that they were going to use after the baby arrived. So they end up coming back to work early. Hospitals don't give a shit about their employees...

Yet another nurse came down w/ a severe case of MRSA, she ended up in the ICU at one point. She felt that she had gotten it on the job as she had taken care of several MRSA patients. The hospital's response to her: "prove it"---as in prove you got it at work.

I can't tell you how many new nurses start out at our facility (my floor, actually) and by the time that their name appears in the hospital news letter's "new employee" announcement section, they have already quit--in the middle of their orientation at times. My floor alone has at least a 50% turnover rate in the last year....3 floor managers in 4 years..the dept. manager hightailed it out of the sinking ship a few months ago. The facility failed JACHO last year and had to get a follow-up visit (they finally passed).
The hospital give the nurse administrators bonus money if they keep staffing low..the less nurses they schedule, the more bonus money the nurse admin people get.

All of this at just ONE hospital. Someone needs to expose all the hospital's dirty laundry..the public would never want to into their facilities as a patient!

And while that $43/hour might sound like alot of money
to a nurse starting out at $17/hour here in Durham,
it's really not actually "more" when you take into account
the difference in housing costs.

I only know what SF salaries are so if the salary you mention for NC is correct it seems that there's a fairly wide disparity in pay across the country for RNs. That would (to me at least) seem to indicate that even if the hospitals are colluding on RN pay, it's not very effective.

and 18-20 an hour for a 2 year degree isn't terrible

but most RN's I've seen in the hospital I work in make in the 20's

and administrative RN's make 29 and up

and to drive to an area 2 hours for a weekend making 50 an hour isn't bad pay

so yes, nurses work hard

and sure, some are underpaid, like in clinics

and yes there are risks, including being sued (just like any helping profession now)

but

well I'll leave it there

determine the market? Just curious.

Rn's (registered nurses) have improved pay and working conditions for Rn's and RN's only. They have done this to a very large extent at the expense of other nursing disciplines, especially LPNs(licensed Practical Nurses). The major difference between the two is schooling and depending on what type of RN you are it can be minimal. There are 2,4 and 6 year RN's and if you are a 2 year it is no problem to become a 4 or 6 year. LPNs are schooled for 18 months to 2years depending on where you are schooled. The way RN's have gotten a corner on the nursing market is the council of nursing (run by RN's) changed the rules as to who can do what and made giving anything by IV an RN only deal. There are other changes but that one was major and gave RN's a corner on the nursing market raising their wages and depressing wages for others. In my state most hospital systems do not differ between LPNs and Nursing assistants! It was an unethical move on the part of RN's (IMHO) and some of the cost of health care is being reflected in this. The difference in schooling between a 2year LPN or RN is minimal and when it comes to 4 year most of that schooling is not medical but in humanities, so there is an economic discrimination going on there too, can you or your family afford 2 years or 4 years of school. So I for one have no problem with nurses wages being discussed in the open.

legally she is responsible for the LPN and tech assistant under her... again she can be sued
there is a Big difference

Yet the RN is assigned just as many patients (or more) even though they are assigned 1,2, or 3 of the LVN's patient assessments to do in a single shift. And the admit packets are done by the RN's. As well as the care plan paperwork updates each shift, the chart checks are all done by the RN's. It just never ends. Does our pay go up with any of these added jobs/liabilities? Nope.
All it takes is one incident to put our license at risk..even if a nurse does nothing wrong on his/her shift, say if the problem/incident happened any time during the hospital stay, ALL the nurses who took care of that patient can be called into a lawyer's office to give a deposition and then be told they have to go to court.
Doesn't matter that it may only be the "fault" of another worker (nurse, doctor, tech), we all get to be dragged into the legal system. Important phrase to remember "I have no independent recollection"...of whatever it is you are being asked as they grill you over your notes (which could be from years and years ago). In other words, all I remember is what I charted and I refuse to offer up more info..more words offered up gives them more words to mangle/twist/use against you.
Nurses will never be given the amount of $$ they deserve to cover what they are exposed to..legally, disease exposure, under appreciated, etc...

Nursing homes? Other than that in hospitals and clinics that is UNTRUE it is in fact the doctor that bears the final responsibility, not the RN. The only time this is true is if the RN goes directly against the written Md's orders. Rn's are not the only ones who can be sued LPNs can and so can CMA's.As far risk by being exposed to diseases such as HIV, CMV,MSRA,TB orVRE any personnel coming in contact with the patient is exposed to such risk (this would include dietary and housekeeping staff) and on that note in many hospitals housekeeping staff make more than LPN's or NA's.

They work under the Dr.'s licence they are working for, so it's the Dr.'s ass that's on the line.

when I was in school, I am a CMA. As I understand we can be sued because of the very thing you point out, we work under an MD's license but we do not have a defined scope of practice, unlike nurses.

Which falls under the MD or DO's license, but you CAN be individually sued as well, although I understand that's rarely done.

I stand corrected! :-)