The owners of the recently-criticized Meadowlands Hospital and Medical Center in Secaucus gave a reporter a tour last week of the facilities, pointing to a new OR waiting room and a successful new program that is making strides in treating brain injuries. But at the same time, they blasted the previous owners of the hospital, saying they “cannibalized” the facility before selling it last year, and also said the hospital workers’ union behaved as a “malignant, cancerous, malicious organization.”
The reactions came a week after a 25-page state report outlined deficiencies in the facility, which was sold to a private for-profit company last year. The new owners had 10 days from the public release of the report to respond to the state, which investigated in July after the union made complaints.
“We’ll continue to move forward and we’ll demand quality work.” – Dr. Robert Lipsky
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The union and the former owners of the hospital, LibertyHealth Systems, which owns Jersey City Medical Center, were surprised by the accusations last week and said such accusations were untrue and unfounded.
Investing in technology and neuroscience
MHMC listed many accomplishments since it took over in December of 2010. They noted that they added 120 new full-time jobs, increased OR volume from 1,800 yearly procedures to 6,000, invested millions in IT, and received a $6.4 million dollar federal grant to treat traumatic brain injuries for 88 soldiers.
“There is construction going on every day, somewhere. We can’t do everything at the same time but we are doing it in bits and pieces as much as we can,” said Dr. Lipsky.
The owners have invested in an advanced brain trauma center by attracting a team of specialists that work in neuroscience and buying special equipment such as a high-tech brain scanning Magnetoencephalography (MEG) machine, only the second one in the U.S.
A special room to house the machine is under construction.
The work has attracted patients from places as far away as California, Mexico and parts of South America.
Dr. Lipsky said four people have been woken up from comas at the hospital.
“Together with the brain injury program and acute patient rehabilitation we are running an outpatient neuroscience institute, it’s called the NJ Comprehensive Neuroscience Institute at Meadowlands Hospital,” he said. “We are treating children with all spectrums of autistic disorders. [We are also treating] epilepsy, depression, dementia, Alzheimer, [and] Parkinson’s [disease].”
Transitioning from LibertyHealth ownership
A 25-page state report released two weeks ago claimed doctors at the hospital failed to get informed consent from patients for same-day surgery procedures including anesthesia; that certain equipment was not properly sterilized; that sterilized materials were not monitored and stored in a manner that ensure sterility, and that there were other procedural and policy-related deficiencies.
The owners said last week that many improvements had to be made to update and repair a facility they claimed was left in disarray by LibertyHealth.
“Eight months and eight days ago, we got a dead hospital, the place was a shell…Liberty did everything to run it into the ground,” charged Dr. Lipsky last week.
Hospital leadership said LibertyHealth “cannibalized” the hospital and attempted to lure the most valuable personnel and most proficient physicians to Jersey City Medical Center (JCMC).
“They took doctors, they took services, they took everything they could,” said Dr. Lipsky.
Last week, JCMC denied the allegations made by MHMC, saying the hospital was fully compliant with state standards; had done considerable renovation prior to the sale; and had high patient satisfaction scores up to the day of the sale.
“We had a whole transition plan. We worked side by side to ensure a smooth transition,” said Joe Scott, President/CEO of JCMC.
According to Scott, JCMC was not allowed to recruit any doctors from MHMC at the time of the sale but indicated that employees were independent and free to leave if they chose to do so.
Upgrading equipment deficiencies
The state inspection report said three containment devices in a sub-sterile area between the OR rooms were in poor repair, with rust stains on the metal valve vent housing and on the inside baskets. The report said that this could cause contamination of the items inside the containers.
After the finding, the hospital has ordered three new devices.
But the hospital owners said last week that they bought old equipment like the devices from the previous owners and were working to replace and update the items.
“[MHMC] inspected all the equipment. There was some equipment they didn’t want and we took it back. They purchased a whole host of things,” said Scott in JCMC’s defense. He said Dr. Lipsky also had equipment shipped over from his existing surgery center.
“Hospitals are a serious business,” Scott said. “Why anyone would deflect anything on us relative to how they operate their hospital, especially eight months later, doesn’t make sense. How you manage your personnel is an important part of leadership. If those issues aren’t addressed, that is a failure on their part, not on us.”
Strained union-hospital relations
MHMC said the hospital underwent a major transformation in work culture and dynamics to accommodate increased volume and a new modus operandi by expecting employees to spend less time socializing and more time working.
“We changed the standards of work,” said Dunaev. “Before it was a country club [and] there was nothing to do for years. They got used to getting paid for nothing.”
Referring to the union, Lipsky said, “HPAE behaves itself as a pest, as a malignant, cancerous, malicious organization.”
The hospital emphasizes it gave Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE) a 5.5 year-contract – the longest HPAE contract in the state – and increased salaries by 2 percent after six months.
But they said HPAE hasn’t lived up to its end of the bargain, making it difficult to work in partnership because they file grievance after grievance. Tensions began after 90 days when the hospital laid off 30 employees, which included union staff.
The union maintains that its main priority is to ensure patient care. HPAE met with the Department of Health and Senior Services in June and later issued a letter identifying a number of conditions that they believed had not been met by the hospital, including not complying with licensing and regulatory requirements, not training staff on these policies and protocols, and failing to offer employee health insurance that is substantially equivalent to pre-sale health insurance amongst others.
“We need to make sure patient care conditions are safe and that the standards are followed. We have very qualified, good staff and so it is not a question that they are not meeting there role,” said Ann Twomey, president of HPAE.
The hospital said it wants to work in partnership but is at odds with a union that wants to “run the show.”
“It is clear that this employer is inexperienced when it comes to including their employees in discussion,” said Twomey. “We are hopeful to get over that – to build a working relationship.”
Twomey said that both good and bad changes to working conditions must be discussed within the framework of the contract, a legally binding document.
Issues of trust
How the union and hospital ownership will build a relationship without trust remains uncertain. The hospital alleges that the union set up to sabotage the state investigation. The DHSS report revealed sterilization procedures weren’t followed. According to the hospital management, they don’t understand why a technician stopped performing sterilization procedures routinely completed over the last five months, days before the state investigation.
“The [union] built the violations for that report. They set us up,” said Lipsky.
The hospital let go of the manager overseeing the technician that made the sterilization errors and took disciplinary action.
“Entirely untrue and unfounded. It is up to managers to assign such duties and failed to do so,” said Twomey. The union had no idea that the state was conducting an investigation, added Twomey.
The owners found other deficiencies in the report such as doctors failing to get informed consent from patients as intolerable and said corrective action was taken to remedy the deficiencies.
“Should we do better?” Lipsky said. “Absolutely. Will we do better? Absolutely. We’ll continue to move forward and we’ll demand quality work.”
Adriana Rambay Fernández may be reached at afernandez@hudsonreporter.com.