Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Las Vegas hospitals are still short on PPE. Staff say they’re paying the price

0430_sun_CandlelightVigilToHonorHeroes

Steve Marcus

Dignity Health workers and SEIU members hold a candlelight vigil to honor front-line heroes in front of Dignity Health St. Rose Dominican Siena Campus in Henderson Thursday, April 30, 2020. The workers were protesting what they say are unsafe working conditions.

Health Care Workers Protest

Healthcare workers stand in front of MountainView Hospital protesting over unsafe working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thursday April 30, 2020. Launch slideshow »

SEIU Local 1107 President Brenda Marzan says she knows of health care workers at Las Vegas hospitals who have become ill from COVID-19. But she doesn’t know how many.

It’s one of several complaints the Nevada health care workers union has about how local hospitals are handling worker safety and infection control during the pandemic. Hospitals have not disclosed when or how many health care workers are contracting coronavirus on the job, leaving many employees fearful, Marzan said.

“The only time we’re finding this out is if it’s the actual employee that’s making us aware of the situation,” said Marzan, one of approximately 20 union members protesting on Thursday outside MountainView Hospital.

Protesters primarily worked for HCA Healthcare's Las Vegas facilities: Southern Hills Hospital, Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center and MountainView. They declined to give their full names, the names of hospitals they worked at or their specific positions, saying they were worried about possible retaliation from their employers.

Since the pandemic hit Southern Nevada in March, health care workers have sounded alarms about a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). They’ve said hospitals have demanded that they reuse PPE when interacting with multiple patients, or forced them to only wear one mask for the duration of a 12-hour shift, during which they might interact with many patients.

The problem is catching up to them as more health care workers get sick but still have a hard time getting tested, they say.

One protester, Zavia, described a hospital coworker who had fallen ill, possibly from COVID-19. The coworker has now been in the hospital for 11 days with COVID-like symptoms, Zavia said. She received a test that came back negative, but Zavia said another test should be administered considering her likely exposure to the virus and that some tests have given false negative results.

“She’s on the front line and she deserves better. We all deserve better,” Zavia said. “We never took this job to die.”

One HCA health care worker, who asked not be to be named but said he works directly with COVID-19 patients, said he has been told to store his masks in paper bags when not using them. He only gets one mask per shift, he said.

“We’re essentially infecting both sides of the mask and then putting it on our faces (again),” he said.

Another employee, Jody, relayed the same anecdote about use of paper bags. 

"There's no way to keep the dirty side from the clean side in a paper bag," she said. 

HCA Healthcare has continuously stressed that it is following all Centers for Disease Control guidelines on PPE to protect employees. Because COVID-19 tests remain limited at the company's Las Vegas hospitals, only employees with acute symptoms may receive tests, company spokesperson Dan McFadden wrote in an email. That's in contrast to University Medical Center, which considers symptomatic employees to be the second highest priority group for testing after acute inpatients, said Dr. Shadaba Asad, medical director of infectious disease at UMC.

"Employees who may be experiencing symptoms related to COVID-19 but are otherwise healthy should seek follow up care, similar in the event of flu, with their physician," McFadden wrote. 

Health care worker Liz said her hospital has not been transparent about its supply of PPE, including N95 masks that shield staff from infectious respiratory droplets. While her hospital is assuring employees that it has sufficient PPE and supplies, that conflicts with what supervisors have told her.

“(If) they have all the supplies they need, then why are they sending out emails saying you can reuse the same gown on a COVID-19 patient if you’re using it on another COVID-19 patient?” Liz said.

McFadden wrote that the company has been "nothing but transparent" throughout the pandemic. 

"From mass email communication to employee town hall sessions, we’ve done our very best to keep the lines of communication open and honest in sharing," McFadden wrote.

Other demands of SEIU Local 1107 include paid sick leave and hazard leave for front-line workers during the pandemic as well as transparency in how hospitals are using money they’ve received from the federal coronavirus relief bill, the CARES Act. Workers are concerned the money could be used to supplement "corporate profits." HCA Healthcare will receive $700 million through the CARES Act. 

The union has also demanded that Nevada OSHA investigate seven hospitals in the state, five of which are in Las Vegas: Southern Hills Hospital, Sunrise Hospital, MountainView Hospital, Valley Hospital and Desert Springs Hospital. As of Thursday, Nevada OSHA had not communicated to the union the status of any investigations, Marzan said.

A spokesperson for Nevada OSHA said last week that the agency is reviewing SEIU Local 1107’s complaints and request for hospital investigations.

As of Friday, Clark County had 4,118 confirmed COVID-19 cases, while Nevada had 5,227 cases. But testing remains limited. Nevada ranks 29th in number of COVID-19 tests conducted per 1 million residents, according to an analysis done by Vox that was last updated Monday.

Without adequate testing for the general population or health care workers, easing social distancing restrictions would be unwise at this point, according to Liz and Zavia. 

“Our whole way of life needs to change,” Liz said. “These casinos with these slot machines on top of each other, we can’t operate like that anymore. That’s just going to be a breeding ground for this virus to thrive and we’re going to see those people here at these hospitals.”

Zavia said that the number of new patients arriving at her hospital doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

“From what I see in the hospital, I don’t think so,” she said.