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September 10, 2004Report: $14M spent on nursesHospital also spent more than $1M on legal feesByRecord-Eagle staff writer PETOSKEY - Northern Michigan Hospital suffered an $11 million operating loss in 2003, most of it attributable to more than $14 million spent to replace striking nurses there, hospital documents show. The figures, which have been closely guarded by management, were included in the hospital's annual financial reports to the Internal Revenue Service and in filings with the state Department of Community Health that requested a new magnetic resonance imaging unit for the hospital. The numbers show the costs of a full year of striking by nurses. About half of Northern Michigan Hospital's then-470 nurses went on strike Nov. 14, 2002. The nearly 21-month-old work stoppage is the longest nursing strike in U.S. history. The striking nurses are represented by Teamsters Local 406. "The cost of the strike, no matter what it ends up, is really too much. It's the Teamsters' strike; it's not our strike," said Joseph Schodde, hospital vice president of finance. Financial documents show the hospital spent more than $1 million in legal expenses in 2003. That's well over double its attorney fees from two years ago, before the strike. Teamsters attorney Ted Iorio said hospital management is engaged in a "crusade to deny the nurses their contract" at any cost. "This unwillingness to bend their own personal philosophy is costing the community millions of dollars - an unnecessary waste of medical resources," he said. Ellis Boal of Charlevoix, a member of a citizens group that last year staged sit-ins at the hospital in an effort to get management to disclose strike-related costs, called the recently released hospital figures "astonishing." Boal is a Green Party candidate for Charlevoix County prosecutor in the November general election. "I'm just flabbergasted that the hospital would take so much money and throw it up against the nurses, when they could have been spending it on health care," he said. Hospital spokesman Thomas Spencer said management was left with no choice but to provide replacements for striking nurses through contractors such as U.S. Nursing Corp. of Denver, which received $13.3 million from the hospital in 2003. "What price can you put on saving lives here every day?" he said. "We were forced to make the choice to continue to deliver quality health care." Schodde said replacement nurse costs also must be mitigated by wages and benefits management would have paid to the nurses who were striking, though he did not provide a dollar amount for that expense. Schodde responded to Teamsters' allegations that management could have reached a contract with the union for far less than it has spent on the strike. "It's not just about the money; it's not just about wages," he said. "It's about management's rights; it's about nurses' right to choose." Hospital documents also showed a decline in number of patients served at Northern Michigan Hospital in 2003. The number of discharges from the hospital went from more than 10,000 in 2002 to 9,700 last year. Total in-patient days declined by more than 2,000; and the hospital's occupancy rate dropped from 62.25 percent in 2002 to 59 percent last year.
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