At a special hearing of the Health and Social Services committee of the Nassau County Legislature on Sept. 29, the Office of Legislative Budget Review said they would do a complete analysis of the nurses’ shift change at NUMC and how much savings it has produced.
On November 12, that analysis was completed. They compared total salaries and full-time equivalent data from May 2009 to September 2009, with the same data from the year before. The document says, “After analyzing the financial statements and nursing salary expenses provided by the hospital administration, we could find no definite savings in the four months following the schedule change. Salaries have remained close to the salaries at the same time last year and for the months May 2009 through September 2009.” Administration admits they have not seen significant savings in salary yet, but expect to now that the training of the 34 newly hired nurses ended in October. It also says that this new model allows for an increase use of per diem nurses, which is against the collective bargaining agreement between the Nassau Health Care Corporation and CSEA. The analysis also says to expect to see an increase in use of sick and vacation days as nurses struggle to get used to and get through this schedule. They do say that the desire to save money “needs to be tempered with concern for patient care.”
Though there is very little visible savings in relation to the bottom line, according to the document, the shift change creates savings in 2 ways, as far as productivity is concerned. First, is not having an overlap in shifts for outgoing nurses to brief the incoming nurses, which used to be 40 minutes. Second, is two hours of savings is achieved through lunch hours. The document says, “Lunch times are not covered by overtime, per-diems or any other additional type of nursing. If a lunch is taken, it is covered by others on the same shift.”
CSEA Local 830 President Jerry Laricchiuta said in response to this analysis, “This pretty much proves what we have been saying all along since the shifts changed on June 7. It is creating unnecessary havoc for our members, and not even creating a visible savings for the hospital. We plan on continuing to fight this and get our nurses back on their industry standard 12 hour shifts.”