The United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP), representing the nurses and health care workers at Fatima Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center, and Prospect Home Health and Hospice, held an informational picket today at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital to shine a light on Prospect CharterCare’s refusal to negotiate a contract that is fair to health care workers and ensures quality patient care. The UNAP and Prospect Medical Holdings management have been bargaining for months for contracts with Fatima Service Workers, Roger Williams RN’s and employees at Prospect Home Health and Hospice, but Prospect CharterCare refuses to negotiate contracts that provide sufficient wages, benefits and working conditions for these health care workers – proposals that will lead to a decline in quality of care for patients.

“Our unions have come together to bargain this contract because we are all tired of Prospect putting profits before patients and health care workers,” said Lynn Redding, an R.N. at Roger Williams Medical Center and local union President. “Their greed knows no bounds, and we will no longer sit by and watch them pay huge dividends to shareholders while siphoning money out of Rhode Island’s community hospitals. Enough is enough. The nurses and health care workers we represent worked tirelessly and selflessly through the COVID pandemic, sacrificing our mental and physical well-being to ensure quality care for patients. We are now simply looking for a fair contract that includes better working conditions and measures to ensure patient safety and quality care.

“At this point what you see is people who are concerned about patient safety. That’s number one,” continued Redding. “We have a company from California that purchased us. They have leveraged us for over $1 billion. They’ve pocketed over half of that, and they’re sucking the rest of the money out of the hospitals. What they’re doing is they’re taking away equipment and basic safety supplies. People are assuming we’re out here just for fair wages. We’re out here to take care of patient safety. It’s been a problem for a while now. We’ve got members who have had their patient load tripled and quadrupled, and they ask, as nurses, How can they take proper care [of patients] when they don’t have what they need?”

“We are now seeing news reports that Prospect is looking to sell these community hospitals to another for-profit company, and they’re trying to leave Rhode Island just as they came in – refusing to negotiate contracts that are fair to workers and patients,” said Cindy Fenchel, President of the local that represents service workers at Fatima Hospital. “We are putting them on notice that we will not let them use our community hospitals as piggy banks to line their pockets and then skip town – saddling these hospitals with debt, leaving workers without a fair contract, and patients without steady, quality care. Rhode Islanders deserve and demand better.

“We care about our community hospital. We care about the patients. We care about patient safety, employee safety,” continued Fenchel. “We need supplies to do the work that we need to. Like Lynn said, this is a billion dollar company. Two people own it and they chose to put the money in their pocket rather than putting it into supplies. or patient safety. We have staffing issues and staffing turnover… They definitely put profit before patients.”

“The working conditions we face are not sustainable for us or patients,” said Occupational Therapist Lorrie Miller, who works at Prospect Home Health and Hospice. “Our health care workers are traveling around the state seeing as many patients as we can, but Prospect has cut positions significantly over the last year or so and we are spread far too thin. Our patients are the ones who are suffering and, in some cases, waiting far too long for care. Prospect needs to do the right thing and agree to a contract that rectifies this situation. The patients we care for depend on it.

“We are out on the road starting early in the morning to late in the evening trying to get to all our patients in,” continued Miller. “I want to emphasize in reiterating what my two colleagues have said: Safety, supplies and staffing are the big issues. We went from 70 people down to 37 in a little over a year. Our nurses are cut very thin. We put in extra hours. We have no personal time after work because we’re busy taking care of our patients. We work late into the night because patients have a need and there’s nobody out there for them. e’re out there by ourselves basically, and it’s unsafe.”

“During covid our members worked really hard and understaffed,” added Fenchell. “They clean the hospital, they cook for the patients. We have hard working mental health workers, CNAs, and secretaries. We just went through a very tough time with covid and in the bargaining process we’re going through now, they have no respect for my members.”

“In 2020 and 2021 we were everybody’s heroes,” said Redding. “We were the ones who came to the hospitals. We were the ones who took care of the really vulnerable patients. We sat there as people died, we Facetimed with their family. Our patients were our priority, not our own lives.”

Last week, the nurses and health care workers at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center, and Prospect Home Health and Hospice overwhelmingly voted to give the union authorization to issue a 10 day strike notice if Prospect continues to drag their feet at the bargaining table.

In recent years, the for-profit Prospect Medical Holdings borrowed more than $1 billion dollars to pay out close to $700 million in dividends to Prospect shareholders, with top executives Sam Lee and David Topper personally pocketing more than $200 million dollars. In addition, Prospect CharterCare received more than $10 millions dollars in CARES Act funding from the federal government.

In the scathing report last year from Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, he portrays Prospect as more interested in lining their own pockets than ensuring the long-term stability of the local hospitals under their control, stating “Rhode Islanders can ill afford their healthcare infrastructure serving as a private bank for private investors.”

In addition to the informational picket, UNAP has launched a multi-media public campaign informing Rhode Islanders about this issue and calling on them to support the nurses and health care workers at these hospitals.

“While we respect the union and its representation of our employees, we do not support the disruptive environment it is creating,” said Fatima Hospital on their website. “Negotiations with the union continue and we remain committed to bargaining in good faith to reach an agreement that is fair to the union members as well as our hospitals.”