N. California Nurses Begin 2-Day Strike Against Kaiser

Registered nurses at 54 Kaiser Permanente medical facilities began a two-day strike Wednesday, leaving hospitals from Fresno to Sacramento scrambling to find beds for patients amid a nasty flu season.

“The number of people filling beds hasn’t been this high since 1981,” said Nathan Nayman, regional vice president for the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California.

And the strike by nurses at the HMO that serves one out of every three Northern Californians is only exacerbating the problem, he said.

The 220 hospitals Nayman’s organization represents are an average of 90% filled, he said. And that percentage is even higher at some facilities, including those in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, where officials have declared public health states of emergency. Many hospitals in Northern California have been placed on “internal disaster mode,” Nayman said. That means staffers are being brought in on mandatory overtime, elective surgeries are being canceled and doctors are making rounds twice a day in an attempt to find patients ready for release.

Kaiser said its facilities were experiencing “moderate to minimal disruptions” because of the strike, which was called early Wednesday after last-minute talks between Kaiser and the California Nurses Assn. failed.

Although Kaiser has been willing to negotiate on salary--offering a 2% annual raise for six years to nurses in the San Francisco Bay Area and 2% a year to all Northern California nurses based on performance--the main point of contention remains staffing levels. Union officials say Kaiser’s cost-cutting tactics have hurt the quality of patient care.