This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA.
Proposed cuts will target multiple departments of the hospital. But what do these cuts mean for the functioning of our healthcare system?
- EVS workers are specially trained to disinfect patient rooms, medical equipment, and public areas to prevent the spread of infection in the hospital. These workers also ensure rooms are cleaned quickly as patients are discharged or move through the hospital, allowing prompt admissions from the overcrowded emergency room. This department is already short-staffed, andyy we can expect overflowing trash cans, sticky floors, and infectious disease outbreaks throughout the hospital when their jobs are cut.
- Case management nurses find placement for patients being discharged, whether helping them set up support to go home, or arranging transfer to a skilled nursing facility. We can expect delayed discharges as patients who are medically cleared to leave instead wait for days in their hospital beds for their discharge to be arranged. As the hospital gets impacted with these patients, we can expect the ER to become critically overcrowded.
- Outpatient behavioral health workers meet the mental health needs of patients in the community. Cuts to these services mean people’s needs for medication, follow-up, and counseling will go unmet. We can expect our community to suffer from these unmet needs, with some people experiencing mental health crises and ending up in our (already packed) ER or admitted to understaffed John George.
- Patient care attendant workers answer call lights, help feed and bathe patients, and assist patients in using the bathroom. These workers ensure the safety and dignity of every hospitalized patient. We can expect patients to miss meals, lay in soiled linens, and risk falling out of bed when they try to get up on their own when there is no one to answer their call lights.
- Many more workers are being cut across all AHS facilities, including nurses, physical therapists, dietitians, doctors, and more. We can expect gaps in care everywhere throughout the system and our community to suffer from these ongoing unmet needs.
Department managers have NO PLANS for how to adjust to these changes in staffing.
Click here to read the article printed in the 12-24-25 Healthcare Newsletter
