Nurses at NHC Florida Osceola Hospital have been working since March to ratify a new contract with administrators.
While the sticking point with the workers of National Nurses United is not so much wages, it is in staffing levels. They made that clear Thursday morning while picketing at the corner of Central Avenue and Oak Street, outside the hospital.
The staff’s most recent contract expired on July 1, and hospital and National Nurses United leaders are working on a new one. The NNU has been asking hospital officials for a new contract that highlights safe staffing in every unit on every shift to ensure high-quality patient care, nurse recruitment and retention and guarantees nurses’ patients are cared for while they take meal and rest breaks.
Nurses like longtime HCA Osceola emergency services nurse Elisabeth Mathieu, who has seen a number of ownership changes over 27 years at a place locals still call Osceola Regional Medical Center, wouldn’t mind a proper raise. But, she and coworkers would like to see the hospital staffed at a proper level to give a level of service to patients that she and the workers of National Nurses United say would put its patients ahead of profits.
“It’s been an ongoing problem; we need support,” she said, noting the hospital generally has two trauma nurses per shift. “We are so barely staffed, especially when the hospital is not anticipating needs. It leads to patients waiting longer for service."
Labor and Delivery nurse Marissa Lee called the current staffing state at HCA Osceola “a grim situation.”
“They want to make use of technology and not people. They want patients to tell a camera what they need,” she said. “We have a personal touch you can’t get from a camera. If they need something, we have too provide it for them anyway.”
“Heaven forbid if there is a large trauma situation where a number of patients are sent here at once.”
HCA Florida Osceola Hospital officials responded to the picket in an email that activities such as that are “typical bargaining tactics from the union” during contract negotiations, which occur every three years.
“This activity is no different than similar actions NNU has taken against health systems across the country. During these negotiations, which began in mid-March, our goal is the same: to secure a fair agreement that continues to support a culture of colleague safety, care excellence and compassion,” the hospital network said in a release.
“The compassionate, high-quality care we provide has been recognized by independent third-party patient safety ratings organizations such as Healthgrades, which recently recognized our hospital with the 2024 Patient Safety Excellence Award™, the third year in a row for this distinction. We are bargaining in good faith. We continue to be hopeful that the union will realize that our nurses’ voices have been heard by HCA Florida Osceola Hospital and begin to bring these negotiations to a positive conclusion.”
Mathieu says she stays at the Kissimmee hospital because she feels like she’s “fighting the good fight” with staff she works well with.
“If I go elsewhere, it will be the same story with nurses and doctors who I don’t know so well,” Mathieu said.
