Nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital plan one-day strike
Strike targets understaffing and other issues that organizers say endanger patients at the southwest Baltimore hospital. UPDATED.
Above: Ascension St. Agnes at 900 South Caton Avenue. (ascension.org)
Citing what they say is management’s failure to address understaffing and other issues, unionized nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore are preparing to hold a one-day strike tomorrow (July 24).
The nurses, who are represented by National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), say this is the first time hospital nurses in Baltimore have gone on strike.
“We are striking because patients cannot get the best care due to hospital management’s staffing decisions that have led to a staffing crisis,” Melissa LaRue, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit, said in a statement released by organizers.
“During contract negotiations, we have put forward many proposals to address our concerns about patient safety and safe staffing,” LaRue said, calling on management to come to the bargaining table.
Registered nurses at Saint Agnes have been negotiating a contract with hospital management since January 2024. They voted to unionize in 2023.
The strike at the hospital, located at 900 South Caton Avenue, will begin on Thursday at 7 a.m. and continue until Friday at 6:59 a.m.
Picketing is planned tomorrow from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. outside the hospital. A rally is scheduled to take place at 9 a.m.
NNOC says it represents more than 600 nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital.
Hospital to Remain Open
In a statement posted on its website, the hospital denounced the job action.
“This decision not only undermines the progress of negotiations between Saint Agnes and NNU, but also creates unnecessary hardship for our associates and their families, as well as concern for our patients and their loved ones,” the statement said.
“We are fully prepared to remain open and continue providing compassionate, quality care during this short-term strike,” the statement continued, noting that a contingency plan is in place utilizing the services of “a staffing agency specializing in work stoppage events, ensuring access to a full complement of highly skilled, credentialed registered nurses.”
Management is also “welcoming [nurses] to continue caring for their patients during the one-day strike,” saying they should notify their supervisor if they intend to work their regularly scheduled shift.
The union says management has refused to address nurses’ concerns about short staffing, RN retention and unsafe “floating” assignments. (Floating is a management practice where nurses are reassigned to units of the hospital where they do not normally work.)
Organizers say understaffing is a chronic issue that was responsible for more than 10% of Ascension Saint Agnes’ nurses leaving between April and July of this year.
“When we have too many patients to care for, patient outcomes suffer,” the union statement said.
“It means patients are waiting for pain medications, waiting for a nurse to answer their call light or for assistance to get out of bed.”
History of Ascension Health, which owns St. Agnes Hospital. (ascension.org)
Troubled History
St. Louis-based Ascension is a private Catholic health system with a mission to deliver service to vulnerable populations and persons living in poverty.
It runs 94 wholly-owned or consolidated hospitals, plus ownership interests in 27 other hospitals, in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
St. Agnes has been part of Ascension since the system was formed in 1999, but did not formally adopt its name until 2019. The overall system is part of the Ascension Catholic Health Ministry, a tax-exempt and faith-based healthcare organization.
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is responsible for setting the ethical and spiritual guidelines for the medical system, which was the subject of a 2022 exposé by the New York Times.
“Ascension, one of the country’s largest health systems, spent years cutting jobs, leaving it flat-footed when the pandemic hit,” the Times article said. “As recently as 2019, Ascension was trumpeting its success at reducing its number of employees per occupied bed, a common industry staffing metric. At one point, executives boasted to their peers about how they had slashed $500 million from the chain’s labor costs. In the years before the pandemic, they routinely refused requests to hire more medical workers or fill open jobs, according to current and former hospital administrators and employees.”
Last year, the organization suffered a ransomware attack that resulted in the breach of 5.6 million patient records. The attack forced it to divert ambulances, close pharmacies, take critical IT systems offline, and resort to pen and paper to record patient information.
An NPR story quoted an ICU nurse at St. Agnes in Baltimore recounting how she almost administered the wrong dose of blood pressure medication because of haphazard procedures instituted after the cyberattack.
The nonprofit chain reported losses of almost $3 billion in 2024 as it attempted to rebuild patient volumes and reduce expenses.