State is probing Caritas Norwood Hospital: Patient death linked to shortage of nurses
By SUE REINERT, The Patriot Ledger, January 17, 2001

The state Department of Public Health is investigating a patient’s death reportedly linked to a shortage of nurses at Caritas Norwood Hospital.

The woman died on Dec. 28 after she was transferred from Caritas Norwood to Boston Medical Center. The health department launched a probe after Caritas Norwood reported the death on Jan. 4, said spokeswoman Roseanne Pawelec.

The patient was sent to Boston because Caritas Norwood did not have enough critical care nurses to treat the woman in the Norwood hospital’s intensive care unit, said David Schildmeier, spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents nurses at the hospital.

“That is an area of nursing practice where there is a critical shortage right now,” Schildmeier said.

Caritas Norwood and other hospitals often have ICU beds available but not enough nurses to staff them, Schildmeier said.

Caritas Norwood is “making good-faith efforts to address the problem, but we have been working with them for a long time to get them to solve this problem,” Schildmeier said.

“This scenario could happen in any hospital in Massachusetts tomorrow,” he added.

Caritas Norwood spokeswoman Diana Franchitto said she could not comment on the death because of patient confidentiality.

Asked about the allegation of a nursing shortage at the hospital, Franchitto said: “There is a statewide nursing shortage. If you read any of the help wanted columns, every hospital is aggressively recruiting nurses.”

The hospital is offering hiring bonuses of $5,000 for experienced full-time nurses in four specialties: ICU, operating room, emergency and telemetry, Franchitto said. Part-time nurses hired in those specialties get $2,500, she said.

General nurses collect a hiring bonus of $3,500 for full-time positions and $1,750 for part-time, Franchitto said.

The hospital does not offer the bonuses continuously. Instead, it tailors the program to the employment situation, Franchitto said.

Last fall the state investigated another death at the hospital reportedly connected to understaffing and found no deficiencies.

In that case, a 40-year-old psychiatric patient hanged himself. An employee who wished to remain anonymous told The Patriot Ledger the death occurred during a staff shortage, but state investigators found adequate staffing in the psychiatric unit.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association is pushing for legislation that would mandate minimum hospital staffing levels. The organization has introduced a bill calling for a commission to set the requirements.

Hospitals statewide are coping with a general nurse’s shortage as well as a critical lack of specially-trained nurses in the ICU, maternity wards, operating rooms and emergency rooms, Schildmeier said.

Younger nurses are not entering these fields to replace the staff, he said.

“These are areas that take a lot of experience and expertise,” Schildmeier said. “When (hospitals) made cutbacks under managed care in the early ’90s, the first place they started to cut is in those areas that nurture and bring along nurses to go into those areas.”

Lack of staff creates bottlenecks in the system, Schildmeier said. For example, hospitals sometimes must divert emergency patients to other facilities when staff shortages make inpatient beds unavailable, he said.

The nurses union is supporting another bill that would require hospitals to report staffing levels along with quality indicators such as patient falls and deaths.

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, the national organization that rates hospital performance, will begin looking into connections between staffing and patient outcomes in a pilot study this summer.

Reporter Kevin Rothstein contributed to this story.

Copyright 2001 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted January 17, 2001