Nurses Striking for Safe Patient Care While Wall Street Worries Over the Hospital Bond Issues – Why We Can’t Successfully Reform Healthcare

Do the folks on Wall Street give a darn over what goes on at the hospital and anything about safe patient care? It doesn’t appear that way does it. In the meantime the nurses that we depend upon, who really know everything and every detail when it comes to your care are potentially striking to drive this point home so they can provide safety to patients and work in a productive atmosphere.

There are hospitals that have laid off medical staff and they are running and working to the point to where they can’t keep up, simply as there is too much to keep track of. Certainly technology helps but you can only cut so far before safety and care gets affected. What is it going to be like one day when private equity and hedge funds start running all the hospitals – big clue, you are not going to like it and with the fascination of everything needing to make a profit today and being a business, that’s where we are headed.

This could end up being one of the biggest strikes in labor history and yes it will cost money. By comparison, let’s look and see what Wall Street is doing, hiring more individuals at million dollar salaries and more.

Wall Street Hiring Continues to Grow While Hospitals and Other HealthCare Facilities Lay Off And/Or Are Purchased by Private Equity Firms To Create Better Profit Algorithms

This scene is not limited to Minnesota and is spreading all over the US so again when it comes to the best care that money can buy for healthcare, it may not be there some day for the illusionists who don’t focus on healthcare but rather see everything as a credit or bond issue and hang on to the algorithms for dear life with their desired results.

We need balance in life and we are certainly not seeing it here and the further erosion of ethics continues. BD

Wall Street analysts are taking note of the impending labor strike of more than 12,000 hospital nurses in Minnesota, and they don't like what they see.

It would create significant pressure on bond ratings at the systems. The report describes a multiplier effect on hospitals' profitability, as labor costs rise quickly through expensive temporary labor, while utilization drops, particularly among patients who would receive nonemergency procedures.

Three of the four systems in the Twin Cities rated by Moody's have a stable outlook as of today, but their balance sheets are fragile. The four systems together earned just $284 million in operating income on $7.2 billion in operating revenue in 2009, for an operating margin of 3.9%. “If the strike raises costs even slightly, it will have a significant effect on margins,” Moody's analyst Sarah Vennekotter wrote.

Minn. strike would hit systems' bond ratings: Moody's - Modern Healthcare