Dear Mr. Regan, My name is Donna Fischer and I’m a nurse at Saint Louise Regional Hospital. I am not a member of your union and I have never met you personally, but for the past two months you’ve been trying to get my attention about the sale of our Daughters of Charity hospital to Prime Healthcare.
You don’t like Prime, and you want me not to like them either. You tell me that Prime would ruin my hospital the same way the company has ruined every other hospital it’s bought. You tell me that Prime likes to squeeze its hospitals dry, robbing them of money and resources just to inflate the bottom line.
You tell me that if Attorney General Kamala Harris doesn’t reject the sale, Prime will shut down the Daughters hospitals or file for bankruptcy, taking my pension with them.
Like I said, I’m not a member of your union but I love Saint Louise and its mission of care. So I decided to do some digging and see for myself if what you are saying is true. And you know what? It isn’t.
The fact is Prime has never shut a hospital or declared bankruptcy. In fact, it’s saved 29 financially struggling hospitals that were on the verge of closure, each time investing millions of dollars on building upgrades and state-of-the-art equipment for patient care.
Prime uses best-in-the-industry business practices and leverages its size to improve the bottom line and put its hospitals on sound financial footing.
Mr. Regan, you would lead us to believe that the workers at Prime hospitals are 100 percent against the company. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the proposed sale of the Daughters hospitals was announced, letters and petitions have been pouring in from current Prime employees praising the company for fulfilling its promises—saving jobs and keeping hospital open.
SEIU 121RN, who represent nurses in Southern California, and the California Nurses Association have embraced the sale of the Daughters’ hospitals to Prime. And so have some of your own union members. Why would they do that if they didn’t believe in Prime and the way it treats its employees?
Here’s what you’re not telling people: Prime Healthcare will continue the charity care mission of our hospitals, honor all union contracts and invest $150 million in capital improvements over the next three years. Prime Healthcare has also accepted 100 percent responsibility for the pensions of the more than 17,000 union and non-union workers—the only bidder to do so.
The only real threat to the Daughters hospitals at the moment is your self-serving campaign, which you’re waging just to win concessions at the bargaining table. If you’re successful in convincing the Attorney General to block the sale, there is a very real possibility that all the hospitals will close or file for bankruptcy.
Mr. Regan, here is my personal appeal to you. Please back off. Let me and my colleagues continue our mission of care. Don’t let our communities suffer the loss of our cherished hospitals. Let the sale to Prime go through.
You don’t represent me. And you don’t represent my hospital.
Donna Fischer, of Gilroy, is a nurse at Saint Louise Regional Hospital.
