Mount Sinai Hospitals To Pay $2M For 'Chronic' Nurse Understaffing

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Mount Sinai Health is being ordered to pay over $2 million to its nurses at three hospitals for "chronic" understaffing, including at its main campus near the Upper East Side, in arbitration decisions made over the last two weeks.

An outside arbitrator found that nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West, and Mount Sinai Hospital were forced to work understaffed shifts in an emergency room, a labor and delivery unit and an oncology unit, according to the New York State Nurses Association.

Last year, Mount Sinai nurses went on strike — citing understaffing as a major and chronic issue that could lead to burnout and poor patient care — and won a new union agreement after three days, which included financial penalties if an outside arbitrator found that the hospital system continued to insufficiently staff shifts.

Arbitrators first found Mount Sinai in violation of the new contractual staffing ratios, fining the health system a "historic" $127,000 penalty for persistently understaffing a neonatal intensive care unit.

"This process showed me there is power in nurses coming together to stand up for our patients," said Maria Colón, a registered nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside's emergency department. "I don't want to give up on nursing, and while I'm here, I am committed to do everything I can to try to make it better for our patients and for the next generation of nurses."

For Colón and her co-workers, this was the second time that their emergency department had been cited for understaffing.

In the latest violation on Feb. 2, the arbitrator found that understaffing was persistent on both day and night shifts. The arbitrator also found Mount Sinai had not made any improvements since its first understaffing violation in June, and only hired five full-time nurses during that time.

One Morningside nurse told the arbitrator in her testimony that she had been attacked three weeks in a row by different patients, according to the New York State Nurses Association.

She contended that understaffing and overcrowding resulted in an increase in workplace violence, the nurses association recounted.

The arbitrator ordered Mount Sinai to pay nurses working understaffed shifts more than $934,000 — and to hire up to 94 full-time employees, provide break relief, and pay the overtime incentives owed to nurses during the next pay period.

Then, on Feb. 11, an arbitrator found chronic understaffing during both day and night shifts at Mount Sinai West's labor and delivery unit, forcing them to pay the overworked nurses more than $957,000.

A representative from the New York State Nurses Association, which represents over 42,000 members across the state, said in a release that the arbitrator rejected Mount Sinai’s attempt to blame the poor staffing on sick calls or personal leaves.

At Mount Sinai Hospital's East Harlem oncology unit, an arbitrator found more persistent staffing shortages and on Jan. 25, ordered the hospital to give $240,000 to nurses.

For all three decisions, arbitrators ordered Mount Sinai to hire and recruit more full-time nurses to comply with the union contract.

"To echo one of the arbitrators in these recent decisions, 'The numbers do not lie,'" said NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane, also a registered nurse. "When NYSNA members track and present the real-time staffing numbers, it’s clear that hospitals are understaffing nurses and putting nurse and patient safety at risk. The end goal of our nurses is not to win more money to work in unsafe conditions; it’s to win safe staffing and improve patient care. Hospital administrators must do better — and we know they can afford to do better."

A Mount Sinai Health spokesperson said the struggle of nursing staffing is not unique to the system, but also that their hospitals are "appropriately resourced."

Mount Sinai CEO Kenneth Davis was paid an eye-watering $5.56 million by the non-profit institution in 2021, according to tax documents. Last year, he got a $1 million pay bump, bringing home around $6.7 million for 2022.

"Hospitals everywhere have grappled with nursing and other health care worker shortages, and these are not challenges unique to any health care provider and have been well documented across the city, state and country," said spokesperson Stacy Anderson. "We are confident that Mount Sinai is appropriately resourced to provide excellent care as we continue to recruit top caregiver talent and maintain the highest standards of clinical quality for our patients."

But that is not true, says a union official, who claims that the city's public hospital system, NYC Health+Hospitals, has been able to comply with staffing requirements in their new contract signed last July. Since then, the groups claims, H+H has gained 600 new nurses through hiring and retention, bringing permanent staffing levels back to pre-COVID-19 levels and reducing an expensive reliance on traveling nurses.

Additionally, union reps say that these recent decisions make it a total of eight times when arbitrators have ruled against Mount Sinai for understaffing, ordering each time for the massive health system to pay financial penalties and to fix staffing shortages.

“I've had nurses calling me in tears because they had to walk by a patient they haven’t seen in two hours," said Sheryl Ostroff, a registered nurse of 21 years at Mount Sinai Morningside's emergency department. "They feel like they let themselves and their patients down, when it is the hospital that has let us down. We hope this decision will finally force Mount Sinai to provide us with the staffing levels nurses and our patients deserve."