Reverse the Decision to Fire All Nurses at MedExpress Urgent Care Nationwide
Reverse the Decision to Fire All Nurses at MedExpress Urgent Care Nationwide
The Issue
The clinicians of MedExpress have recently become aware of the business decision to fire all of the registered nurses nationwide. This is a rash, reckless, and unsafe decision for a number of reasons. Not only is there no plan in place for the enormous amount of retraining it would require to make our centers run without nurses, but removing our lifeline from our clinics is a death sentence. Without significant, mandatory, hands-on, company-wide training to make this new model work, it is completely negligent. Nurses are the core of our facility, and one of the biggest reasons that patients choose to come to MedExpress instead of other urgent care facilities. They choose us because we pride ourselves in safety and patient care. We, the providers running these clinics on a daily basis, demand that this decision be reversed in the interest of patient safety.
Nurses are our first line of defense. They alert us to critical patients, they use clinical judgement to assess and triage high risk situations, and they monitor and assist us in these situations from beginning to end. With the scope of services MedExpress provides, it is completely unreasonable and unrealistic to run our centers at full capacity without them.
Many of our providers have never had any formal training in reconstituting medications, administering medications, never mind all of the effort that happens behind the scenes to make sure those medications are available, unexpired, stored correctly, and safe to use. Medical assistants, although a valuable resource in our clinics, do not have the expertise and it is beyond their scope of practice to perform most nursing duties. The American Association of Medical Assistants clearly specifies that their role does not involve critical thinking; this position is best utilized for standing orders and direct supervision. Allowing them to perform ear lavages does not cover the enormous deficit that we will be operating under.
Make no mistake, there will be deaths and there will be very expensive law suits. Every study, several of which are included below, conclude that nurses make facilities safer. Decreasing the amount of nurses directly leads to patient harm and sentinel events. MedExpress experiences medical emergencies every single day. This decision takes away our capability to deal with those situations in the best possible way to achieve good outcomes for our patients.
Most of the x-ray technicians that are now going to be tasked with the responsibility to start IV lines and respond to emergency situations have no training for these duties and are not comfortable with doing so. It is clear that there will not be sufficient time or resources to train them before September 7th.
MedExpress once was an industry leader. Now, we are ashamed of this company and its decision to increase corporate profits and put patient lives at risk. The “industry standard” is to cut corners and capitalize on a broken system—that was not the MedExpress way. Our communities need the services we provide, as their primary care offices and hospitals depend on the immediate, everyday, non-emergency care we provide.
This decision will lead a majority of providers to resign. That is a process that is already happening that most of us are considering or have already decided upon. We are not willing to risk our licenses for a corporation who has shown nurses, the heart of our centers, how little they appreciate them. This will force either center closures or high utilization of very expensive locum providers who will not have sufficient training or capability to run the facilities the way we currently do. This decision will lead to a significant decrease in patient volume, as the provider is now responsible for a remarkable amount of new tasks and responsibilities that we are not trained appropriately to provide. Each day that these clinics operate without a registered nurse is an unsafe shift. It is clear to us that MedExpress does not value patient safety, and we refuse to represent this company any further, unless this decision is reversed.
Reported profit of $5.6 billion in the first quarter of this year:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8655582/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01114.x
5,923
The Issue
The clinicians of MedExpress have recently become aware of the business decision to fire all of the registered nurses nationwide. This is a rash, reckless, and unsafe decision for a number of reasons. Not only is there no plan in place for the enormous amount of retraining it would require to make our centers run without nurses, but removing our lifeline from our clinics is a death sentence. Without significant, mandatory, hands-on, company-wide training to make this new model work, it is completely negligent. Nurses are the core of our facility, and one of the biggest reasons that patients choose to come to MedExpress instead of other urgent care facilities. They choose us because we pride ourselves in safety and patient care. We, the providers running these clinics on a daily basis, demand that this decision be reversed in the interest of patient safety.
Nurses are our first line of defense. They alert us to critical patients, they use clinical judgement to assess and triage high risk situations, and they monitor and assist us in these situations from beginning to end. With the scope of services MedExpress provides, it is completely unreasonable and unrealistic to run our centers at full capacity without them.
Many of our providers have never had any formal training in reconstituting medications, administering medications, never mind all of the effort that happens behind the scenes to make sure those medications are available, unexpired, stored correctly, and safe to use. Medical assistants, although a valuable resource in our clinics, do not have the expertise and it is beyond their scope of practice to perform most nursing duties. The American Association of Medical Assistants clearly specifies that their role does not involve critical thinking; this position is best utilized for standing orders and direct supervision. Allowing them to perform ear lavages does not cover the enormous deficit that we will be operating under.
Make no mistake, there will be deaths and there will be very expensive law suits. Every study, several of which are included below, conclude that nurses make facilities safer. Decreasing the amount of nurses directly leads to patient harm and sentinel events. MedExpress experiences medical emergencies every single day. This decision takes away our capability to deal with those situations in the best possible way to achieve good outcomes for our patients.
Most of the x-ray technicians that are now going to be tasked with the responsibility to start IV lines and respond to emergency situations have no training for these duties and are not comfortable with doing so. It is clear that there will not be sufficient time or resources to train them before September 7th.
MedExpress once was an industry leader. Now, we are ashamed of this company and its decision to increase corporate profits and put patient lives at risk. The “industry standard” is to cut corners and capitalize on a broken system—that was not the MedExpress way. Our communities need the services we provide, as their primary care offices and hospitals depend on the immediate, everyday, non-emergency care we provide.
This decision will lead a majority of providers to resign. That is a process that is already happening that most of us are considering or have already decided upon. We are not willing to risk our licenses for a corporation who has shown nurses, the heart of our centers, how little they appreciate them. This will force either center closures or high utilization of very expensive locum providers who will not have sufficient training or capability to run the facilities the way we currently do. This decision will lead to a significant decrease in patient volume, as the provider is now responsible for a remarkable amount of new tasks and responsibilities that we are not trained appropriately to provide. Each day that these clinics operate without a registered nurse is an unsafe shift. It is clear to us that MedExpress does not value patient safety, and we refuse to represent this company any further, unless this decision is reversed.
Reported profit of $5.6 billion in the first quarter of this year:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8655582/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01114.x
5,923
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Petition created on August 14, 2023