Starkman: America Should Import Hospital CEOs, Not Nurses

[TexasTowelie]

Eric Starkman of Los Angeles is a former Detroit News business reporter who blogs at Starkman Approved.

By Eric Starkman


Representing nursing unions these days is doing God’s work. That might sound like hyperbole, but studies show that the quality of patient care increases when nurses unionize. Standing in solidarity with nurses just might save your life.

Hospital nurses get fired for going public with patient safety concerns, which is why they were opting to unionize long before the pandemic. Hospital managements in recent years have stretched nurses to the breaking point, increasing the ratio of patients they are responsible to care for while paying substandard wages given their responsibilities and health risks, as well as curbing their benefits. In addition to being treated badly by hospital managements, nurses are often disrespected by physicians and patients.

Nursing isn’t a job for the faint of heart.

Suicide statistics attest to the stress of working in nursing. Nurses are 18 percent more likely to commit suicide compared to individuals in the general population, according to a recent study published by JAMA Psychiatry. The study’s findings are even more alarming given they are based on data spanning 2007-18. It’s reasonable to assume that nurses experienced dramatically higher pressures in 2020 treating Covid patients and helplessly watching many of them die, as well as their colleagues. Another recent study reports that nurses have accounted for 32 percent of all healthcare worker-related deaths owing to Covid, and that nurses have died at nearly twice the rate of physicians.

Rather than address nurses’ concerns as they increasingly sought to organize, hospital managements instead opted to hire costly union-busting consultants to intimidate and frighten them. One example is Beaumont Health, whose CEO John Fox is the poster boy for all that’s wrong with U.S. healthcare. In 2019, well before the pandemic, nurses at Beaumont’s flagship hospital in Royal Oak sought to organize as the hospital’s decline was well under way. Fox spent nearly $2 million on union busters whose intimidation tactics were so successful the Michigan Nurses Association vowed it would never again seek to organize at Beaumont because of management’s “climate of fear.”

Read more: https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/29102/starkman_america_should_import_hospital_ceos_not_nurses

[CrispyQ]

1. A must read.

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Ron Rittenmeyer, Tenet’s former CEO, last year was paid $17 million. In 2019, he was paid $24 million.

Importing hospital CEOs instead of nurses would be a great step forward to reforming America’s broken and corrupt healthcare system. One need only look to Canada and the U.K. to appreciate the bargains to be had.

Dr. Kevin Smith, CEO of University Health Network in Toronto, last year earned the U.S. equivalent of $674,312 to oversee Canada’s largest academic hospital system and the biggest health research institution in North America. The highest paid executive in the U.K.’s health service in 2019 earned the U.S. equivalent of $657,751.

Beaumont’s Fox in 2019 earned $6.8 million to run his company’s eight hospital system into the ground. Based on the golden parachute paid to a predecessor, Fox could stand to make more than $30 million if regulators approve Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health taking over the hospital network he destroyed. That’s on top of the more than $20 million Fox already received since joining Beaumont some six years ago.