Nurses Invite Penny Wheeler to Have a Face-to-Face Conversation

For Immediate Release
 

Contact:  Rick Fuentes

Barbara Brady

Minneapolis – June 22, 2016 - Nurses with the Minnesota Nurses Association are asking Allina Health CEO Penny Wheeler to have a personal conversation with them about preventing physical assaults that healthcare workers suffer from patients and families on a daily basis.

"Dr. Wheeler has not been at the negotiating table where Allina negotiators have refused to discuss issues important to nurses like workplace violence prevention and safe patient staffing," Abbott Northwestern RN Angela Becchetti said. "Nurses are inviting Dr. Wheeler to come down from her CEO office and have a face-to-face meeting so we can give her the facts her team may not be sharing."

Nurses are also inviting Dr. Wheeler to go on the floors at her hospital and see for herself the type of care patients receive from replacement nurses - and then visit next week to see the superior care that MNA nurses provide.

"Dr. Wheeler has been communicating through news conferences from her office," Becchetti said. "We believe she should come out to see us on the sidewalk and talk to the front-line nurses who care for patients every day."

Nurses are also questioning Allina's $108 million investment in the Health Catalyst medical data company instead of investing in what makes a hospital successful: nurses and other staff, and a safe workplace environment.

Nurses are engaging in an Unfair Labor Practice Strike that began at 7 a.m. Sunday, June 19. MNA has filed numerous ULPs against Allina Health in part for failing to provide information nurses need to negotiate and for failing to bargain on non-economic issues in the contract.