Allina executives continue corporate assault on patient care access with closures at Mercy Hospital and Unity Campus

(St. Paul) – February 13, 2024 – Today, Allina Health executives announced their plan to close Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and surgical services at Mercy Hospital – Unity Campus in Fridley, and to close pediatric inpatient beds at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids. In a letter delivered to the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) today, Allina executives stated their intent to lay off 63 MNA full-time equivalent (FTE) Registered Nurse positions at Unity Campus by June of this year as a result of these closures.

The following is a statement from the Minnesota Nurses Association:

“These planned layoffs expose the cruel hypocrisy of hospital executives who claim that there are not enough nurses who want to work. Nurses in these units want to work; they have worked at the bedside for years, despite decades of degrading conditions under Allina executive leadership that have put care and working conditions at the bedside in jeopardy. Hospital executives chew us up and spit us out, and then dare to wonder why so many nurses have one eye on the exit door.

Sadly, this is only the latest in a long line of callous cuts by Allina Health under the leadership of CEO Lisa Shannon. In the last two years, Allina executives closed labor and delivery services at Regina Hospital in Hastings and consolidated it as a campus of United Hospital, more than 20 miles away in St. Paul. Allina executives shuttered adolescent mental health services at United, despite a statewide shortage of mental health beds. And Allina executives halted work at Cambridge Medical Center, putting access to care at risk in this rural community. For dropping the axe on the chopping block, Shannon took more than half a million dollars in bonus and incentive pay in 2022, as part of her total compensation of $2.6 million.

Ultimately, it is patients who will pay the price while Allina executives pocket their millions and pinch pennies on a corporate balance sheet. When there are fewer nurses to answer a call light, deliver medications, or help someone to the restroom, it is patients who will feel their absence. When a patient takes a sudden turn for the worse at Unity Campus and must take a $5,000 ambulance ride to Mercy Hospital, it is that patient who will pay Allina’s bill. And when families in Coon Rapids must drive an additional 30 minutes to find their child a hospital bed, it is those families who will be left to wonder: if their child’s access to care is not the priority of Allina executives, what is?”

This year at the state legislature, MNA nurses seek passage of the Healing Greed Agenda, a legislative package to hold hospital executives accountable to patients, the public, and healthcare workers. The agenda includes a proposal, authored by Sen. Majority Leader Erin Murphy and Rep. Andy Smith, to require more prior notice when executives slate a hospital for closure or propose service reductions, unit closures, healthcare consolidations, or other related changes. The bill would require at least one public hearing to be held in the community affected by a planned closure or consolidation, as well as strict fines for hospitals that violate the law.