VENTURA : Nurses Voice Their Plight to the Public

Katherine Greene, one of nine nurses at the Ventura County Medical Center scheduled to be laid off, said she will lose medical benefits Sept. 10--the day she is due to give birth to her second child.

Greene was one of a handful of nurses who criticized the medical center’s layoff plans Thursday at a noon news conference in front of the county hospital, 3291 Loma Vista Road in Ventura.

The nurses, members of the 26,000-member California Nurses Assn., said they hoped to bring public attention to their plight.

Judith Overmyer, union co-chief for 350 nurses at the medical center, repeated earlier assertions that the layoffs will ultimately hurt the level of patient care at the facility.

She called the layoffs a “disturbing trend that’s not just at this hospital, but countywide and nationally.”

Officials at Ventura County Medical Center have denied the level of patient care will suffer in wake of the layoffs. They also have said each laid-off nurse is being offered re-employment, minus health and other benefits.

Greene, of Ventura, received her lay-off notice last week while she was on maternity leave. She said her husband has health insurance but that it won’t cover the pregnancy or other “pre-existing conditions.”

“I will have to pay out of my pocket,” said Greene, a registered nurse in the operating room and a five-year employee of the hospital.

Also, Overmyer said nurses at the hospital had not agreed to a 14% pay cut, as reported in The Times on Thursday. In fact, she said county officials directed hospital administrators to negotiate the cut from nurses in bargaining sessions.