St. Francis Medical Center nurses plan to picket the Lynwood hospital Tuesday, Aug. 29, claiming they’re severely understaffed, which has fueled an employee turnover rate of more than 50%.

Those factors, they say, have conspired to undermine patient care.

Prime Healthcare bought the facility, at 3630 E. Imperial Highway, through bankruptcy in 2020, and nurses say the company terminated 20% of the hospital’s registered nurses and instituted a three-year wage freeze.

The employees, represented by the United Nurses Associations of California, Union of Health Care Professionals, numbered 850 to 900 at St. Francis before Prime took over, a union representative said. That has since dropped to 550 to 600.

“Before the cut, they were still a little short of ideal,” the union said. “Since the cuts, they’re dangerously short-staffed.”

The nurses’ labor contract expired Aug. 14 and negotiations are scheduled to resume Sept. 14.

Scott Byington, who has been a nurse at St. Francis for 28 years, said he’s seen the hospital’s quality of care plummet since Prime took over.

“Patient care, patient safety standards … everything has hit rock bottom,” the 57-year-old Westchester resident said. “We’ve had poor outcomes in the ER, and some people have died because there wasn’t enough staff.”

Nurses say Prime has rejected every proposal they’ve put forward for safer patient care during labor negotiations.

In a statement issued Monday, St. Francis spokeswoman Susan Lowe said the hospital will continue to bargain in good faith with the union’s leadership to reach an agreement that’s “in the best interests of our hospital, our caregivers, and most importantly, those we serve.”

She added that Prime has invested more than $36 million in improvements to St. Francis, including upgrades to infrastructure, equipment, technology, clinical resources and staffing.

“We are dedicated to the wellbeing of our patients, and to supporting our staff in their ability to provide expert-level, safe care to every patient we serve,” Lowe said.

The hospital said that it will remain open during the picketing, with all services available to patients.

Ana Sequeria, a licensed vocational nurse at St. Francis, said nurses are “stretched thin with heavier workloads, causing major delays in patient care.”

“Patients are being diverted from the emergency room to other hospitals,” she said. “They even have LVNs doing the job of RNs. This means that patients have to wait longer for care, and this puts our patients at risk.”

Prime employs an estimated 50,000 workers and operates 45 hospitals in 14 states.

Last month, the company’s Centinela Hospital Medical Center announced it would close its Maternal Child Health Services on Oct. 25, leaving the Inglewood community without any obstetrics, labor and delivery or neonatal intensive care units.

Complaints of understaffing have also cropped up at Prime Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, Kaiser facilities throughout Southern California, West Anaheim Medical Center, and several LA County nursing homes, among other medical centers.

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