Albany Medical Center is facing scrutiny from its nurses for an expired union contract and a state Department of Health investigation into staffing complaints, the New York State Nurses Association said. The union is calling on the hospital to release a staffing report from the health department, which the hospital received earlier this month after an investigation into staffing complaints. Nurses claim the hospital is in violation of state law by not complying with staffing plans laid out by the hospital's administration, which was made with the input of nurses on a staffing committee. Several union members that submitted complaints received letters from the state that substantiated more than 50 complaints, the union said. Tonia Bazel, a registered nurse on the hospital's clinical staffing committee, said she feels the administration has left the committee in the dark by not sharing information necessary to their job. “We are supposed to be a unit that receives all that information to allow us to address any holes, and any problems we’re having with safe staffing issues, it’s been worse than trying to pull teeth,” Bazel said in an interview. “Nothing we say gets across, and they tell us they can’t open the books, that it’s private information.” Albany Medical Center spokesperson Matt Markham said the hospital is not releasing the Health Department’s report until they have had the opportunity to review its contents. He said the hospital has not been in breach of its staffing plan, and a Department of Health presence at hospitals is not uncommon. “We have 45 days to share the report. We want to develop a thoughtful response to it, and collaboration is critical to us,” Markham said in an interview with POLITICO. “There is collaboration within our institution and with the Department of Health.” Markham would not share details regarding the Department of Health report. He noted that they are still in the review process, when asked about complaints that the report has not been shared with staff. The hospital is working to negotiate a contract that expired in July, but Markham said terms such as requiring all nurses at the hospital to join the union remain a sticking point in talks. They are expected to resume negotiations this week. The nurses union says the hospital has not presented a contract they can accept. The state Department of Health confirmed that it is investigating the hospital but declined to comment on the status of the investigation. Albany Medical will be required to submit a corrective action plan if found to be in violation of state hospital staffing laws. The plan must be implemented after receiving approval from the Department of Health. If they do not comply, they may face penalties. IN OTHER NEWS: — Albert Einstein College of Medicine received a yearly $14 million federal grant for five years that will go towards their participation in a national effort to create “plug-and-play” vaccines and antibody-based therapies. The funding comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and it will fund a consortium led by Einstein called Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics Against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats that will link 13 teams in academic, government and industry that will work together on several projects. ON THE AGENDA: — Wednesday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Digital Health New York hosts its annual summit. MAKING ROUNDS: — Mount Sinai Health System named Lisa Stump its chief digital information officer and dean for information technology at the Icahn School of Medicine. Stump most recently served as senior vice president and chief information and digital transformation officer for Yale New Haven Health and Yale Medicine. — Maimonides Health has appointed Matthew Weissman as chair of medicine and Eitan Dickman as chair of emergency medicine. Weissman most recently served as site chair of the department of medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and Mount Sinai Downtown. Dickman previously served as interim chair. — Greenberg Traurig added Mark Furnish to its health care and FDA practice in Albany. Furnish previously served as director of the state Department of Health’s Center for Long-Term Care Licensure, Planning and Finance. GOT TIPS? Send story ideas and feedback to Maya Kaufman at mkaufman@politico.com and Katelyn Cordero at kcordero@politico.com. Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
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