NY Nursing Union Addresses Critical Nurse Ratios at Albany Med

• The New York Nurses Association, which represents over 42,000 nurses, held a press conference to bring attention to unsafe nurse ratios at Albany Med.
• This understaffing issue is endangering all patients at Albany Med, according to the Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade, which gave the hospital a D in safety.
• Hospital funds are under scrutiny as this ongoing staffing issue happens alongside multiple executives making over a million dollars in compensation and the hospital receiving a $3.9 million research grant. 

On February 7th, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) held a press conference to update the public on a critical understaffing problem at Albany Medical Center and the danger this poses to patients.

NYSNA represents more than 42,000 nurses working in the state of New York and its President, Nancy Hagans, RN BSN CCRN, states that “It is completely unacceptable that Albany Med is not listening to its hardworking frontline nurses when it comes to patient safety and flouting New York state laws meant to ensure quality care. As the major academic medical center for the Capital region and beyond, they need to invest in care for the community and put patients before profits.”

This article will expose some of the complaints voiced by nurses working at Albany Med, its safety grades provided by an independent grader, and how these issues may impact employment negotiations in the coming months.

Staffing Crisis at Albany Medical Center

The Albany Med Health System’s flagship hospital, Albany Medical Center, currently serves a third of the 1.2 million people in the Capital region. The hospital has grown, acquiring nearby hospitals, but there has not been a significant investment in the retention or hiring of nursing staff to provide care to the growing patient population.

Albany Med is said to have the longest Emergency department wait times in the entire state, in addition to several complaints about the quality of care available at the hospital.

A recent complaint alleges that Albany Med refused to provide break coverage for ICU nurses. This forces nurses to either skip breaks, to the detriment of their own health, or leave the unit understaffed with more than 2 patients to every one nurse on each shift.

In the NICU, there is a similar complaint where nurses claim to be caring for 3 to 4 patients to each nurse, compared to the standard safe ratio of 2 patients to 1 nurse. Nurses caring for newborns in their most critical time are spread too thin and forced to make the best of the dangerous circumstances.

Nurses at Albany Med speak out because they love what they do but feel the hospital has grown “to care more about the bottom line than safe patient care,” leaving nurses to step up and fight for safe staffing.

Patient Safety at Albany Med

For the past 20 years, the Leapfrog Group has brought transparency to patient safety through Hospital Safety Grades. Twice a year, each facility is graded on 22 safety measures.

Each of the 22 safety measures is split into two domains, process/structural and outcomes measures, each accounting for half of the measure’s score. According to the Leapfrog Group, there are the following definitions of the scoring criteria:

• Process Measures represent how often a hospital gives patients recommended treatment for a given medical condition or procedure. For example, “Responsiveness of hospital staff” looks at patients’ feedback on how long it takes for a staff member to respond when they request help. 
• Structural Measures represent the environment in which patients receive care. For example, “Doctors order medications through a computer” represents whether a hospital uses a special computerized system to prevent errors when prescribing medications.
• Outcome Measures represent what happens to a patient while receiving care. For example, “Dangerous object left in patient’s body” measures how many times a patient undergoing surgery had a dangerous foreign object, like a sponge or tool, left in his or her body.

Once scored, each hospital is assigned a letter grade ranging from A to F. The letter grades allow patients a quick way to compare different hospitals on matters such as preventable errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.

Below is a map showing each state’s density of A-rated hospitals.

Albany Medical Center was rated D on safety. It has been given a D-rating at every evaluation since the Spring of 2020. The following sections detail poor grades at Albany Med related to their nursing shortage:

Nursing and Bedside Care for Patients

40 out of 100 on adequate staffing of RNs, LPNs, and UAPs compared to the average score of 71 out of 100. This measure is meant to ensure that each hospital has enough nurses providing direct care to patients to monitor their care over time, asses symptoms, administer medicine, and assist in surgical units.

Responsiveness of Hospital Staff

76 out of 100 on the responsiveness of staff when a patient requested help due to pain or new symptoms emerging compared to the average score of 80.79. The higher this score, the more likely a hospital has enough staff to quickly care for patients and systems that ensure all patients receive care promptly.

Death from Serious Treatable Complications

186.71 deaths for every 1,000 patients who have serious treatable complications after surgery, compared to an average of 143.25. Albany Med had the worst score compared to any hospital measured.

From the survey done at Albany Med, we can also learn several insights into their nursing staff, such as the hospital not employing any nurse-midwives or certified midwives and patients not being allowed to bring their own doulas for delivery.

Albany Med Seeking Funds

The complaints from nurses feel even more stark when considering that at the end of January, Albany Med received $3.9 million in grant money to research long COVID. This is vital research being handed to a facility facing criticism from patients and staff alike for their mismanagement of priorities within the hospital.

Albany Med Health System is a tax-exempt nonprofit that brought in over $250 million in 2022 revenue with a net income of $3.9 million. This income would have more than doubled had over $5 million in compensation not been divided among 10 of the hospital’s top executive staff members.

For context, other salaries and wages across Albany Med’s totaled 1.24 billion for 16,000 workers.

The Bottom Line

The nursing union at Albany Med is relatively young, only beginning in 2020, but last week, those nurses proved that they would stand up for their patients and the safety of their peers, demanding safe staffing and safe patient care. 

The conference announcing these dangers at Albany Med precedes negotiations between the hospital and the nurses’ union to renew their employment contract. Negotiations will hopefully end before July, but if no agreement can be struck, we may expect a strike notice at Albany Med by the end of the summer.

Regardless of this possibility, the nurses at Albany Med can be proud knowing they spoke up about the critical danger posed by not prioritizing nursing care.

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