tanford Hospital delayed 12 elective surgery cases Monday morning
in response to the ongoing nurses' strike.
Meanwhile, a federal mediator who has been part of the contract talks
for the last few months wants to talk to the union on Friday, although
no negotiating session has been set.
The hospital also closed its emergency room to ambulance traffic for
about a day last week to respond to staffing concerns. But a hospital
spokesman stressed that the emergency department's trauma center, a regional
facility that handles the most life-threatening accidents and other injury
cases, was never shut down, although it's not clear whether any trauma
cases happened during that time.
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital had earlier transferred 36 patients
to reduce its census, although Stanford Hospital had a normal patient
census through Friday, for the first three days of the strike.
About 1,730 nurses went on strike at 7 a.m. last Wednesday after contract
talks between the hospitals and the union, the Committee for Recognition
of Nursing Achievement (CRONA), broke down.
The two sides are far apart on salary and other issues. The hospital
is offering 8 percent in pay raises over two years, while the union is
asking for 21.5 percent in raises over two years.
Each side appeared Monday to be waiting for the other to make the first
move.
"We're willing to meet with the nurses," said Felix Barthelemy, vice
president for human resources at both hospitals. "They never formally
responded to our last offer."
"We're out here striking, that's our response," said Kim Griffin, CRONA
spokeswoman. "There's no point in meeting with someone whose position
hasn't changed."
Elective surgeries and elective admissions at Packard Hospital have also
"been put on hold" since last week, Barthelemy said.
And Stanford Hospital has now made a decision "to slow things down" by
postponing a dozen elective surgeries Monday morning, Barthelemy said.
"We need to manage the workload. We are holding all of our (staffing)
flex for traumas and emergency admissions."
Hospital census figures released Monday afternoon, however, showed that
Stanford Hospital had 284 inpatients, not far below a normal census. Packard
Hospital had 147 patients. It usually runs close to capacity for its 180
inpatient beds.
Up to 500 replacement nurses have been hired to replace the CRONA nurses.
--Don Kazak
