Three prominent New York City hospitals shelled out more than $2 million to New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) members this month over alleged “chronic nurse understaffing,” according to the union.

Following arbitration, Mount Sinai Morningside paid nearly $934,000 to nurses in its emergency department, Mount Sinai West paid more than $957,000 to its labor-and-delivery unit nurses, and Mount Sinai Hospital paid more than $240,000 to nurses in an oncology unit, according to NYSNA.

“To echo one of the arbitrators in these recent decisions, ‘The numbers do not lie,’” NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane said in a statement. “Hospital administrators must do better—and we know they can afford to do better.”

It’s the eighth time arbitrators have ruled against the health system for understaffing, despite a 2023 state law requiring hospitals to create staff and management committees that establish plans for lower nurse-to-patient ratios.

Keep reading here.—AE

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Diabetes patients with access to lower-cost medications may be less likely to experience preventable health complications, a February study from researchers at Duke University and not-for-profit health services company Harvard Pilgrim Health Care found.

The researchers examined 10,588 diabetes patients from 2004 to 2017, aged 12 to 64, who were enrolled in a commercial health plan that included a preferred drug list (PDL)—a benefit that can lower costs for medications like insulin. Compared to the control group of 690,075 patients living with the disease who did not have access to a PDL, the research subjects saw “modestly improved short-term health outcomes” when medication was more affordable.

“We can see that their out-of-pocket costs went down,” Frank Wharam, the study coauthor and professor at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, told Healthcare Brew. “Their medication use went up, and we can see that their complications went down.”

Keep reading here.—WP

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Women make up about three-quarters of healthcare workers in the US, but those who have kids may struggle to access parental leave, according to a recent report.

The report, from The Best Place For Working Parents, looks at trends in “family-friendly policies” being implemented by employers across the US, including paid time off, on-site childcare, and flexible work. It considers benefits offered by more than 1,200 companies in the organization’s national network, which focuses on “providing support for working parents through evidence-based strategies.”

Businesses in the healthcare sector were the least likely to offer maternity or paternity leave, with 59% and 35% of organizations surveyed doing so, respectively.

Keep reading at HR Brew.—CV

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