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HOLYOKE, Mass. –The registered nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association
at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital will fight back against cuts to essential child and elder
psychiatric services recently announced by hospital owner Trinity Health. The patient care and
staff reductions are contrary to Trinity’s stated mission to “stand with and serve those who are
poor, especially those most vulnerable.”
“By cutting dedicated child psychiatric services and reducing the quality of elder services,
Trinity Health is failing our patients, our community and its own mission,” said Marilyn
Hernandez, a Providence RN who works in the child and adolescent unit. “We provide high-
quality and increasingly rare psychiatric services for young children at Providence Hospital.
Trinity wants to mix children as young as five with adolescents and teenagers, putting their
safety and treatment at risk.”
From what nurses know right now, in addition to RN and non-RN staff cuts, Trinity has said it
will close its dedicated child unit and merge services for children as young as five, six and seven
years old with services for adolescent and teenage patients, many of whom are being treated at
Providence for violence and/or sexual problems. Trinity also plans to increase the number of
elder patients psych nurses care for at one time from six to eight, threatening the care quality and
safety of another vulnerable population.
The Massachusetts Department of Mental Health details the long wait times for mental
health treatment for children, many of whom wait days in emergency departments for
inpatient care. Children wait 4 or more days for inpatient mental health care 3 times
as often as adults: http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/dmh/publications/acute-inpatient-
services-special-populations.pdf
Harvard University researchers in 2015 found that there are an estimated 101 “stuck
kids” waiting in emergency departments for mental health care in Massachusetts:
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/degree%20programs/MPP/files/15%203%
20MPP_PAE_Emily%20Hartmann%20Katherine%20Schiavoni_StuckKids.pdf
Providence nurses met on Monday to discuss Trinity’s announcement and will continue to
discuss ways to push back against cuts to their most vulnerable patients. The announced cuts
affect patients near and far. Providence Hospital, with one of the only inpatient child psychiatric
units in the region, serves young children and their families from across the Commonwealth.
In a November 2015 article in the Springfield Republican, Christopher Dadlez, then president
and chief executive of Trinity Health-New England, said several things to the newspaper that are
in sharp contrast to the announcement by Trinity last week:
“Our concerns include health equity, taking care of every person who is in need.”
"We are a faith-based organization that is in the health care business specifically to focus on
community patients. They are the center of our universe. When you talk about ministry it is
really to minister to our community to the patients that we serve, to the public that we serve, that
is the genesis of it.”
Dadlez also told the newspaper that the creation of Trinity Health-New England should ensure
the "viability" of its entities in terms of employment.
Providence Behavioral Health Hospital is the premiere private behavioral health facility in
Western Massachusetts, serving all ages with inpatient and outpatient services. The 104-bed
hospital is the largest provider of behavioral health services in the region. The hospital’s services
include acute substance abuse and opioid treatment, along with inpatient adult, adolescent and
child psychiatric services.
The current iteration of Trinity Health began in 2013 when the former Trinity Health and
Catholic Health East merged. Trinity operates 94 hospitals and 121 continuing care facilities in
22 states. Trinity has a workforce of 131,000, annual operating revenues of $17.6 billion, and
assets of $23.4 billion, according to Trinity.
Trinity executives did not tell MNA nurses about their planned patient care reductions and staff
cuts during several months of negotiations that recently concluded. Providence nurses on June 29
voted to ratify a tentative agreement that was reached between the elected nurses on the MNA
Bargaining Committee and hospital management on June 15. Negotiations began in October
2017 and included 14 bargaining sessions. This was the first round of MNA contract negotiations
with Trinity.
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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by
fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of
nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the
Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.