MEDIA INFORMATION

Corporate Marketing & Public Relations

Administrative & Regional Training Center
144 Genesee St. · Buffalo, New York 14203

August 27, 2020 Immediate Release

Contact: JoAnn Cavanaugh, Director Public Relations
Office: (716) 706-2061 | Cell: (716) 228-4886 | Email: jcav@chsbuffalo.org

Statement on Nurse Staffing Ratios and Picket at Mercy Hospital

As a tertiary care hospital, Mercy Hospital of Buffalo recognizes the importance of maintaining safe
nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to provide the highest quality care. The hospital has been working
collaboratively with CWA Local 1133 through a joint Workload & Staffing Committee to identify areas of
need and work together on solutions. The committee is made up of union and hospital nurse leaders and
frontline staff.

Mercy Hospital is fortunate to have a strong workforce of 900 registered nurses, with a current RN
vacancy rate of just over 4%, compared to the national average of nearly 18%*. That strength enabled
Catholic Health to assign a number of critical care and medical/surgical nurses to its Covid-19 Treatment
Facility at St. Joseph Campus, while still maintaining safe staffing ratios at Mercy Hospital. During the
COVID crisis, Mercy Hospital continued to actively hire RN candidates and was one of only a few
hospitals in New York State to allow nursing students to continue their clinical education.

With today’s changing healthcare landscape, Mercy Hospital, like many other hospitals, is grappling with
the often unpredictable ebbs and flows of patient volume. To safely address surges in patient volume,
the hospital utilizes a float team of critical care and medical/surgical nurses who are assigned to areas
with the most pressing staffing needs. Additionally, we continue to recruit nurses aides and other
support staff, and investigate new staffing models to provide our nursing team with the resources they
need to deliver high quality care.

Catholic Health’s new best-in-class EPIC Electronic Health Record (EHR), launching in November, will
provide real-time data to help manage patient flow and staffing, in addition to giving nurses more time
at the bedside to care for patients. CWA has been actively engaged with Catholic Health in this major
EHR transformation effort. In preparation for a successful implementation, additional temporary RN staff
are being hired to give Mercy nurses time to train and care for their patients during the transition.

Like many healthcare experts, including the Healthcare Association of New York State, we believe that
healthcare staffing decisions should be made at the local level, ensuring a flexible, team-based
approach, rather than through government-mandated staffing ratios.

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*According to the 2020 National Healthcare Retention and RN Staffing Report