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The Communicator
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| State budget offers no help;
cuts 11 positions Low pay, ‘horrendous’ schedules driving nursing-home surveyors away By SHERRY HALBROOK The state budget enacted in May did nothing to relieve stress levels for PEF members who inspect nursing homes. PEF had lobbied the state Legislature to restore funding to preserve 11 of the positions at the state Health Department’s Health Care Standards and Surveillance program, but to no avail, in spite of widespread criticism of nursing homes and of DOH for failing to protect vulnerable patients from poor care. “Those 11 positions were vacant and we’re still losing more nursing home surveyors,” says PEF member August Cardinale, a pharmacist who has been conducting the surveys for nearly 20 years. “When Dr. Antonia Novello came in as state health commissioner, she promised to hire 80 new surveyors in the Metropolitan Area Regional Office. We got maybe 25 to 30. We have only 14 surveyors left in the New Rochelle office,” he said. “We used to have 25 to 30 people doing the surveys here. We don’t pay enough to attract new people and when we do hire, we’re not keeping them. We just lost six recently in New Rochelle.” Patients suffer most The surveyors, who go out in teams of five or six professionals in different health specialties, are supposed to make unannounced visits to each facility annually. If they cite a home for deficiencies, the surveyors must return to verify that the problems have been corrected. They also respond to other concerns for patient care at any homes that come to their attention. Understaffing in the nursing homes puts patients at risk, and often their only protection is from the sharp eyes of the DOH surveyors. “Short staffing in the homes means they rely heavily on drugs to control the patients’ mood and behavior,” Cardinale said. “It seems like a cheap, easy fix in the short run, but it costs more in the end, than a real, long-term solution. “We become the patients’ advocates. But we only get a partial view if we’re in a hurry. Spending less time means we may miss something important,” he said. “If there were sufficient staff we could have the opportunity to spend the time we need to thoroughly investigate all health care issues.” Cardinale said. The DOH uses contract nurses to try to fill in the staffing gaps, but that doesn’t address the underlying issues, according to Cardinale and other PEF members at the department. “Conducting these surveys is a very labor-intensive process, if you do them right,” Cardinale said. “We have to work off-hours, in order to survey the nursing homes on every shift. And we have to work weekends. We do it all for very mediocre pay.” The combination of poor pay and difficult working conditions is deadly for recruiting and retention and undercuts the department’s ability to protect patients from poor care. One nurse’s story Former PEF member Karin Mathew found she could not justify the sacrifices she had to make to stay in the job. Mathew, a registered nurse with two masters’ degrees, was hired as a surveyor last September, but quit this April to take a job “for a whole lot more money and better working conditions” with the US Labor Department in New York City. “I looked at the job as a surveyor as very satisfying and an opportunity to really help people,” Mathew said. “I loved that it allowed me to use all of the skills I’ve learned over my 17 years of nursing. I feel I was able to make a big difference for the patients.” Mathew said she held on for more than six months because the job was so satisfying, but eventually had to recognize that she could also make a big difference for people in a job that paid much better and offered far better hours and working conditions. “I was hired by DOH to work in the New York City office. I understood that I would be doing inspections in Westchester County. But when I finished training, they said I had to work out of the New Rochelle office, because I had once worked part-time for a nursing home in Brooklyn. “My schedule with the state was horrendous and the pay was very low. Almost every week, I had to be gone on overnights for two or three days. They sent me all the way to Rhinebeck and Kingston. I worked very long hours. It just wasn’t fair to my family.” Mathew said. The struggle continues PEF Vice President Joe Fox, PEF’s labor-management chair at the Health Department, said the union will continue to work for improved staffing, pay and working conditions for the nursing home inspectors. “We will go on bringing these concerns to DOH and to the legislators. This is an important issue,” Fox said, “not just for our members, but also for the patients in these homes.” |
