Three Tenet Healthcare-owned hospitals under investigation in Massachusetts, officials confirm

Meanwhile, nurses at St. Vincent Hospital alleged earlier this year that inadequate staffing levels, hospital policies, and “a deliberately punitive management culture” caused delays in medication and treatments, as well as preventable patient falls, the Globe reported in February.

Shawn Middleton, communications and public relations manager for Tenet’s Massachusetts hospitals, said in a statement that the hospitals will continue to provide patients high-quality care.

“We are grateful for the dedicated physicians, nurses, and staff who prioritize patient care every day,” Middleton said. “We do not condone the MNA’s actions to try to discredit our high-quality organization.”

Nurses at Framingham Union Hospital filed an eight-page complaint earlier this month, alleging efforts to cut costs, such as understaffing and rationing supplies, have caused harm to patients that would have otherwise been preventable.

Adam Crawford, a nurse at the hospital, who said he saw the Massachusetts Department of Public Health officials in the building on Monday, said they were looking into one such alleged event that occurred in January in the cardiovascular unit.

While the state health officials were in the hospital on Monday, Crawford said, managers kept the nurse-to-patient ratios on the floors where investigators were at the recommended levels at the expense of overcrowding the emergency department by bringing fewer patients out of the ED. In the complaint, nurses alleged the hospital is often understaffed, with nurses having to oversee too many patients.

“There’s this level of, ‘We have to be compliant if they’re in the building,’” he said.

Tenet Healthcare, a publicly traded company, also operates St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where nurses held one of the longest nursing strikes in state history. The Dallas-based company also owns Leonard Morse Hospital, which provides mental health treatment in Natick, two imaging centers, and an ambulatory surgery center, according to its website.

Earlier this month, the nurses union held a news conference outside of Framingham Union Hospital and said the problems at the state’s Tenet-owned hospitals were worse than the more highly publicized ones at hospitals owned by Steward Health Care. The union cited the volume of unsafe staffing forms nurses have filed with the union.

Mary Sue Howlett, the union’s associate director of nursing, told the Globe that nurses in the union at Tenet-owned hospitals — Framingham Union, Leonard Morse, and St. Vincent — have submitted 1,005 forms so far this year complaining of unsafe staffing, the bulk of which were filed by nurses at St. Vincent. During the same period, Howlett said, nurses at Steward hospitals in Massachusetts submitted 674 unsafe staffing forms across six Steward hospitals: St. Elizabeth’s, Good Samaritan, Holy Family of Methuen, Holy Family of Haverhill, Morton, and Carney.

Nurses at Framingham Union Hospital hope the Department of Public Health investigators look into more incidents across the hospital and become a regular presence there, said David Schildmeier, director of public communications for the nurses union. Nurses have been informed that they have a right to speak with investigators without management present, he said.

“We want them there on a regular basis, because what’s happening is not safe and appropriate by any means,” Schildmeier said.

On Friday afternoon, Schildmeier said the MNA received a panicked phone call from a Framingham Union Hospital nurse stating that there were three nurses and no aides on a medical surgical floor caring for 19 patients, two of whom were supposed to have one-to-one monitoring because they were considered at high risk of falling. This, he said, is despite Tenet’s staffing plan that, with 15 patients on the floor in question, patients can expect three nurses and three aides.

Schildmeier said the union alerted the Department of Public Health to the situation.

Stella Tannenbaum can be reached at [email protected].