Mari Cordes, president of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals announces priorities for the "Put Patients First!" campaign at the Statehouse Tuesday. VTD/Alan Panebaker
The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals announced a campaign Tuesday to put people above profits.
The union announced legislative priorities including support for a state-run 25-bed Level I acute care mental health facility in the northern part of the state to help accommodate patients displaced when Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury.
The politically active nurses’ union joined with the Vermont Workers’ Center at the Statehouse to announce the campaign.
Mari Cordes, president of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, said the union will focus on its mission of providing high quality care and ensuring adequate staffing.
The union and the Vermont Workers’ Center are pushing legislation that would ensure safe staffing ratios for dialysis patients, bills that would expand the admitting and signature privileges of nurse practitioners, a bill to allow child-care workers to bargain collectively, and a bill to clarify a mandate that health insurance companies cover midwife services.
The union will also negotiate a new contract with Fletcher Allen Health Care in a few months.
Cordes took the state’s largest hospital to task for initiating a hiring freeze during 2009 and 2010 when its CEO received more than $1 million in compensation.
Cordes and others expressed support for the health care reform effort with the ultimate goal being universal health care.
“We want full universality and full access,” Cordes said. “Vermont does not need an insurance product for consumers. Vermont needs a strong health care system for people. It needs a strong and visionary community academic medical center not a profit organization that happens to be in business of health care.”
Peg Franzen, president of the Vermont Workers’ Center, said the group, which created the “Health Care is a Human Right Campaign,” continues to lobby for workers and patients.
“We’re working not only to improve working conditions but to dramatically improve patient care and have a powerful voice pushing for health care for all,” Franzen said.
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I know the very disheartened Vermont State Hospital workforce appreciates the solidarity shown by the VFNHP. These frontline nurses have been speaking out for months now about conditions they’ve encountered since Irene hit, but their voices (and the voices of other private hospital executives and health care professionals) are being largely ignored by some in the Senate. The next few days will be critical to the future of Vermont mental health care for the foreseeable future. Thanks to the nurses for trying to help VSEA sound the alarm about the current plan’s perceived flaws.
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Yes thank you very much. It is nice to have your support.
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A union pushing for a state run, non privatized, medical system? Health care is a need, not a right. If its a right, then so is food, gas, housing, recreation. I think the unions should stop putting their pay above everything else. What a hypocritical joke. Vermont is a failed state where the productive a leaving.