Hennepin Healthcare nurses fed up with board of directors, demand county step in

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Nurses who work at the Hennepin County Medical Center or HCMC want oversight of the hospital to return to the county. Right now, there's a board of directors responsible for the governance of the health care system and its finances.

In recent months, the county imposed new checks on the board, but the nurses association says that's not helped improve conditions for them, and the hospital board has not been transparent about spending. Now, the nurses association wants new leadership. Joining us to explain the situation is Jeremy Olson-Ehlert. He's a nurse at HCMC and co-chair of the Minnesota Nurses Association. Jeremy, welcome.

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Hi. Thank you for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Thanks for taking the time. So the hospital is controlled by this group of community members created by the Hennepin County Board about 10 years or so ago. What is not working with that form of management?

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. So it was actually in about 2007 is when the new governance had changed over from it being Hennepin County to a subsidiary. And since 2007, we've just kind of seen this more privatization of the hospital, where now they're starting to more just look at the bottom line, putting profits-- they're putting profits over patients, profits over employees rather than actually trying to retain workers, trying to retain nurses to stay here rather than having to pay agencies. And a lot of that is coming from the board.

CATHY WURZER: Give us an example when you talk about profits over patients, profits over the staff, what does that mean? Give me an example.

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. So it was October of '23, so a few months ago, they had decided to cut our benefits. Routinely when you work within a public type sector, you have pretty good benefits. But what they decided to do in order to solve a funding gap, they decided to cut a lot of our benefits.

So trying to funnel more employees to do care within the hospital, which there's a whole slew of problems there because we don't have enough appointment space to be able to accommodate all of us. But then with those cuts, it helped increase their the profits for the hospital. So they're cutting our benefits just to be able to make a little bit more money.

CATHY WURZER: The incoming board chair and two board members quit in December. What's going on there from your perspective?

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. I mean, I wish I had more answers on that. But unfortunately due to the open meeting laws, that's a whole another slew of issues as well as when they had this emergency meeting where these board members had resigned, they had closed and went into a closed session.

Rather than speaking publicly and resigning publicly, they went into a closed session, which means that it was proprietary somehow. And that's when the two board members resigned. And those resignations were part of the oversight resolutions that were passed from the commissioners.

So I just think that's concerning because all the resolutions were just for more accountability. Like where is the money going? How is it being spent? The hospital is receiving tax-paying dollars. And I think that the public should know where money is going if they're cutting benefits for county employees.

CATHY WURZER: So you're asking for the hospital to go back into the hands of the county right in terms of control of it to manage the hospital like it was way back when. But why do you think that's a good idea given that the county is such a large governmental agency, and they deliberately did what they did for specific financial reasons, again, back in the day.

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: . Yeah so the reason why it'd be great to go back into the county is, if you look even around the whole United States, there are very few publicly-owned county-owned hospitals left in the country, which is concerning because the more privatization of health care, you're going to start seeing a lot more turning away patients because they may not like their payer mix.

Whereas the mission at HCMC has always been we serve the under need, we serve anyone who comes to these doors. It doesn't matter. And going back under the county can really help maintain transparency. And in all we're calling for was just the dissolution of the hospital board. It wouldn't change much with leadership. It's just that the county board will then resume management as the board.

CATHY WURZER: As you probably heard, the head of the medical staff at HCMC admits that nurses face challenges there but thinks getting rid of the citizen board would make things worse. And who knows if that would happen or not? But why are nurses willing to enter into potentially even more difficult situation going in that route?

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. And I disagree. I don't think that the citizen-run board is not just community members like one thinks. These are wealthy, private, health care type community members who aren't truly looking-- I mean, I can't put words into their mouth what they're looking at, but they're not just your everyday community members.

A lot of them are wealthy. And when it comes to looking at the bottom line, they may not look at some of our lower paid employees who are having to pay way more in health insurance than some of these our own providers who are even on this community-run board.

So I disagree that having this community-run board being dissolved would be a problem because our commissioners are also at community board. They have the knowledge. They have the expertise. They have policy aids. I truly believe Hennepin County has the capability to fully handle and improve services within the hospital.

CATHY WURZER: So final question in reference to this situation. What leverage do the nurses have here, the M&A. Can you walk out on strike? I mean, what's your what's your plan going forward here?

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. So unfortunately being a public sector hospital, per state law, at HCMC, we are not allowed to strike. But we have voices, and we can make sure that our voices are heard. The one thing that we're just really tired of is our nurses continue to have the highest workplace violence and assault levels.

Our nurse retention rates are plummeting. We will use our voices to make sure that our nurses are heard and to make sure that we can keep the nurses that we have at the bedside at the bedside and even try to get some of the nurses who maybe left to come back. And we won't stop fighting until we're able to be heard and improve our profession because right now--

CATHY WURZER: So you mentioned violence on the job. You mentioned violence on the job, and I had that story right before you and I started to talk about the staff member at Centracare in Willmar who was stabbed earlier this week by a patient having a mental health issue who had a knife. How does that situation ring true to you? I mean, you mentioned violence on the job. Are you seeing dangerous situations like that at HCMC?

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Extremely. It wasn't too long ago where there was a there was a provider who was strangled. We have nurses routinely getting kicked, punched, assaulted in any way, spitting, verbal.

It's just unacceptable, and it's just continuing to get worse. And we have been on hospital management for a very long time. We went out on an informational picket in August of 2022 in regards to the workplace violence levels that are happening. And we're in 2024 now, and we're still having the highest workplace violence levels.

CATHY WURZER: Which I bet is also difficult in that to try to retain nurses on the job because of those situations.

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. I mean, there's been times where we can't even-- there may be issues of we can get assaulted and we can try to press charges. But then we've had to come back from the attorney that we weren't assaulted enough, that the danger wasn't that bad to being assaulted, so then they didn't want to press charges. So that's also an issue that's kind of happening as well, why some nurses are just leaving because nothing's being done.

CATHY WURZER: Well, Jeremy, thank you for taking the time to talk with us and for outlining your situation. We appreciate it.

JEREMY OLSON-EHLERT: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Jeremy Olson-Ehlert Ellard is a nurse at HCMC, also the co-chair of the Minnesota Nurses Association. We have a full statement from Hennepin Healthcare up on our website with this story. That's at mprnews.org.