Ascension Saint Joseph said hospital leaders deny cutting staff to save money.

Pat Meade said she was aghast when she read in the Thursday’s edition of The New York Times that Ascension health system had saved almost $500 million in three years.

That information was from the presentation “Successful Labor Optimization Efforts” given by two Ascension executives at the Becker’s Hospital Review 6th Annual Meeting 2015.

Meade, 72, a registered nurse on the post-anesthesia care unit, a 35-year employee at Ascension Saint Joseph - Joliet and treasurer of the St. Joseph Nurses Association, which represents its union nurses, feels the money was saved by cutting staff to care for patients, which occurred before COVID-19.

That’s in addition to the “mass exodus we’re seeing now” as St. Joe’s nurses are leaving the hospital for other jobs, she said.

“COVID just exacerbated the situation,” Meade said.

Meade said the staffing situation has been a topic on the monthly staffing and acuity meetings for so long that “you’d think they’d pick their feet up,” she said.

But Ascension Saint Joseph disagrees.

In a written statement sent to the Herald-News, Ascension Saint Joseph said hospital leaders are addressing the nursing shortages, which aren’t exclusive to Ascension, and are “committed to having appropriate levels of staffing to care for patients.”

“This latest installment of The New York Times series criticizing Catholic health care is rife with misinformation and selective reporting,” according to the statement. “Before the story was published, Ascension provided more than 12 pages of on-the-record information to the Times, but little was included in the story.”

In its on-the-record” information sent to New York Times reporters before it published in Thursday’s story, Ascension said its “system mortality results are better than two-thirds of hospitals measured nationwide” and that its “quality measures related to infection rates are also significantly better at Ascension than the national average.”

According to Ascension, its full-time equivalent employees increased from 82,334 in fiscal year 2010 to 124,995 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020.

“Any allegation that Ascension’s current workforce challenges relate to workforce decisions made in years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally misguided, misleading, and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare workforce,” Ascension said in its on-the-record message.

In the short term, according to Ascension, it has hired “higher-cost contract staff” but also said the solution is “not sustainable for the long term for a myriad reasons.” According to Ascension, it also offers “numerous programs and innovations” to promote well-being among its staff.

Meade, who said she had surgery three weeks ago with a follow-up procedure last week, watched her short-staffed peers – nurses and certified nurse assistants – run around caring for patients “the best they could” and it was “painful” to watch.

“People are working at 150%,” Meade said. “And they’re getting burned out.”

Meade said she often lies in bed at night reviewing her day. “Did I do everything I should do? Did I do it on time? Did I feel confident when I handed off my patients’ care to the next nurse that I did the best job that I could?”

“We have a conscience,” Meade said.

Although Meade said she “thanks God” for the agency nurses, she also said nurses from the patients’ community are more invested in caring for their community. Despite help from the agency nurses, Meade said the number of ADOs (assignment despite objection) the nurses have filed has risen dramatically.

Katherine Soprych, an intensive care unit nurse at St. Joe’s, said in an Oct. 22 Herald-News story that there was one day when nurses came to work and were told each would have four patients, when safe staffing in the ICU requires two patients for one nurse.

Soprych said in the story that the nurses were able to negotiate the staffing to three patients for each nurse.

[ Updated: 3 Joliet nurses suspended by St. Joe’s over staffing dispute; dozens more rally ]

That may sound low to someone who isn’t a nurse. But what happens when a nurse is caring for a critically ill COVID-19 patient and another patient codes?

Yes, the code team rushes in, Meade said. But the nurse needs to quickly provide information to the team – and it takes time to remove the personal protective equipment, she said.

Nurses need time to properly start intravenous lines, toilet patients, give medication to patients – the nurse can’t drop it off and go, Meade said. Family members might have questions, she said, or need comfort or reassurance when a patient is severely ill.

Nurses need to know when a patient is deteriorating and then act according: doing the tests, doing treatment modalities, she said. Hospitals are care-delivery systems, Meade said.

“And that’s being lost,” Meade said.

So nurses cut out self-care, Meade said. They skip meal breaks. They skip bathroom breaks, she said. And yet nurses are punished for saying, “I know my capacity and I’ve already extended myself the night before and the night before that and the night before that,” Meade said.

“It’s not the patients are being denied care or that care is being withheld,” Meade said. “[The nurses] can only get to so many at one time. It’s not do-able if you don’t have staff.”