240 Nurses at Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital Strike To Protect Their Patients As News Surfaces That Mutual Owner Prime Healthcare, An Out-of-State Actor, is Abandoning Its Patient Communities in the Philadelphia Area and the Nurses Who Serve Them

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, December 22, 2023

CONTACT: Megan Othersen Gorman / [email protected] / (215) 817-5781

 240 Nurses at Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital Strike To Protect Their Patients As News Surfaces That Mutual Owner Prime Healthcare, An Out-of-State Actor, is Abandoning Its Patient Communities in the Philadelphia Area and the Nurses Who Serve Them 

“The Only Way to Stop a Bully is to Show Them That You’re Stronger.”

5-DAY PICKET SCHEDULE FOR BOTH HOSPITALS, BELOW

Plymouth Meeting, PA – Decades of research have proved that hospitals with above-average staffing levels are associated with fewer patients losing their lives. Yet Prime Healthcare, the frequently sued, for-profit corporate umbrella for dozens of U.S. hospitals, including Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton and Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol, is actively driving its nurses away and seemingly blithely threatening patient care by flat-out refusing to staff safely, cutting critical services, and devaluing nurse retention.

96 nurses at Suburban and 136 RNs at Lower Bucks, all members of PASNAP, have been in contentious contract bargaining with Prime for months. This week, as the news surfaced that its three hospitals in the Philadelphia area (Suburban, Lower Bucks, and Roxborough Memorial) may be up for sale, Prime refused the nurses’ invitation to add bargaining sessions to try to work out an agreement and avert a strike.

“What kind of company promises to take care of patients then cuts the services patients need the most?” says Suburban General Nurses’ Association Co-President Shannan Giambrone, RN, a 23-year ICU nurse at Suburban, where Prime closed the behavioral health unit in late September and laid off the nurses who staffed it; previously, Prime had closed a cardiac pulmonary unit and a medical/ surgical unit. “Then, when the nurses fight back so we can give the best care we can, Prime walks away from bargaining and forces us to go to extremes. The only way to stop a bully is to show them that you’re stronger.”

Nurses from Suburban and Lower Bucks had overwhelmingly authorized their bargaining committees to call a strike, with 96% and 97% voting YES, respectively. The percentage of nurses from each hospital who actually went on strike mirrored those percentages.

During bargaining, there was no indication given to the nurses at any point from the management of Suburban and Lower Bucks Hospitals’ impending sale. According to Harold Brubaker’s report in the Philadelphia Inquirer (which can be found here: Lower Bucks, Roxborough and Suburban Community Hospitals Appear to be for Sale or via PDF: HERE), the hope included in the Request For Proposal (RFP) is that the facilities, post-sale, will be converted from critical-care facilities to behavioral health hospitals. The real fight, it is now clear, centers on the very existence of their hospitals. 

If Prime’s hospitals are sold and converted to behavioral health facilities, the effects on their patient communities will be dramatic and devastating. Ambulance response times will increase, patients will be transported farther and farther away for emergency services, nurses and healthcare professionals will lose their jobs, and the basic medical services provided at these institutions – the services Pennsylvania families have relied on for decades – will cease. 

“Prime’s motto – ‘Saving Hospitals, Saving Jobs, Saving Lives’ – is a flat-out lie in every respect,” says former Suburban General Nurses’ Association member Carrie Waltz, RN, a behavioral health nurse at Suburban until Prime closed the unit on the eve of her 15th anniversary at the hospital. 

“A strike is always a last resort, but unsafe staffing and cessation of critical services are extremely serious issues – issues that cannot wait,” says ICU nurse and co-president of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital Shirley Crowell, RN, a 32-year veteran of Lower Bucks Hospital. “Prime has refused to prioritize patient care, and that is our line in the sand.”

As a California-based employer, the only state with legally mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, Prime is capable of staffing safely and to the law in California but flat out refuses to do so in PA. Further adding to the sky-high stress levels of its caregivers, Prime provides its nurses with grossly inadequate health insurance and fights them every step of the way on any medical claim they make, making recruitment and retention of nurses near to impossible. 

Prime is an out-of-state actor seemingly unconcerned with the health and well-being of the people of Pennsylvania or the nurses who provide their patient communities with care. 

“Healthcare professionals enter the field because we care,” said PASNAP President Maureen May, RN. “We are the primary advocates for our patients, and we don’t walk away from that role lightly. But we will send a message, via a strike, that you have to do the right thing by your patients and your staff. This is our message—to the hospital, to the public. This is what fierce patient advocacy looks like.” 

SCHEDULE FOR THE REMAINING 4 DAYS OF 5-DAY STRIKE

Picketing will occur daily at both Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital on Saturday, December 23rd and Sunday, December 24th. No Picketing on Christmas Day. Picketing is only at Suburban Community Hospital on December 26th. 

During their strikes, the nurses will hold a holiday toy and coat drive for Bucks County Toys for Tots, the New Falls Road Red Cross Homeless Shelter, and the Laurel House for Domestic Abuse; see attached flyer.

Suburban Community Hospital: 2701 Dekalb Pike, Norristown, PA 19401

Lower Bucks Hospital: 501 Bath Rd, Bristol, PA 19007

Suburban General Nurses’ Association and the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital are affiliates of PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents more than 10,000 frontline nurses and healthcare professionals across the Commonwealth and was founded on the belief that patients receive the best care when clinical-care staff have a strong voice to advocate for both patients and themselves.