Members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) union at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh picketed outside the hospital Thursday to push for safer staffing ratios and limits on the use of artificial intelligence in their new contract.
The previous contract between CVPH and NYSNA—which represents almost 900 nurses, physical therapists, IT workers, and other professionals—expired in December. Since then, they’ve had more than a dozen negotiating sessions on a new one. Union officials said a big sticking point has to do with nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.
“Last year, management unilaterally raised our safe staffing ratios,” Shawn Baker, a nurse on the medical-surgical unit and chair of the hospital’s staffing committee, said at a press conference. According to Baker, CVPH increased the number of patients per nurse on her unit from four to five.
“We said no; they did not listen,” she said. “Now, we are getting ready to update the staffing plans, and NYSNA nurses are worried that the hospital administrators are gonna make our safe staffing ratios even worse, which is even less safe.”
Longtime CVPH nurse Chris Swiesz said higher ratios also hurt nurse retention. He works in the emergency department, where the ratio is sometimes eight to 10 patients per nurse.
“We spend the time and the money to train people and then they cannot take it anymore and they are gone,” he said. “You are left with a fresh group of nurses with nobody to train and mentor them.”
NYSNA members want staffing ratios enshrined in the new contract. The union’s also fighting to maintain members’ benefits.
Limits on artificial intelligence
Calls for safe staffing levels and good health insurance have been part of these contract negotiations for years. A newer issue is the use of artificial intelligence in health care.
Vicki Davis-Courson, a registered nurse at CVPH and NYSNA’s eastern regional director, said the union doesn’t want AI to end up replacing nurses at the bedside.
“People need people. They need people who care, they need people who have compassion to help them through their difficult times in life.”
There are other concerns around AI. A recent joint study by Harvard and Stanford found that even the leading AI models used in clinical settings made errors critical to patient care in up to 15% of cases.
Ransley Garrow, a desktop engineer with the CVPH IT department, said most of those were errors through omission, where the AI didn’t recommend follow-up care when warranted.. He said that’s not good for nurses.
“It puts an overworked nurse in the position where they now have to take care of their patients while also double-checking anything that an AI model does to ensure that it’s not making any mistakes,” he said. “A tired nurse, an overworked nurse is not going to as easily catch these mistakes.”
All that means union officials want limits on the use of AI in the contract as well.
Hospital responds
In a statement, CVPH President Michelle LeBeau said the hospital is negotiating with the best interests of its employees, patients and the community in mind.
“The negotiation process is challenging under the best of circumstances,” she continued. “In today’s health care environment—where mounting regional, state and federal pressures are driving us to rethink how we deliver essential care now and in the future—they are even more difficult and more important than ever to ensure our patients and community continue to have access to the care they need.”
Davis-Courson said she’s hopeful, but not confident, that hospital leadership will bring something the union will accept to the next negotiating session. She said a strike is possible.
“We are not quite at that point yet, but we are working toward that.”
CVPH and NYSNA are due back at the negotiating table on June 10th.
NYSNA members at Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake and Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone are also working toward new contracts. So far this year, NYSNA members have settled contracts with Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, Carthage Area Hospital, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburg, and Elizabethtown Community Hospital.
