Federal report details a patient’s death at understaffed Loretto Hospital as workers strike

A patient died this year when no one was around to treat him in the emergency department of Loretto Hospital, where about 200 unionized workers are on strike over staffing conditions.

WBEZ obtained an inspection report about the death from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which funds hospitals and investigates patient safety issues. Loretto Hospital officials acknowledged “staffing challenges” in the report. The waiting area and the triage room within the waiting area, where the patient was found in a bathroom, were both covered by one nurse, the report said.

“Loretto Hospitals recognizes this poses a risk from a patient safety standpoint i.e. the waiting area is not monitored when the triage nurse is with a patient in the triage room,” according to the report.

About one-third of the staff at Loretto went on strike this week over better pay and safer staffing conditions. They include ER techs, nursing assistants and maintenance workers, all of whom are represented by SEIU Healthcare. Union leaders say some Loretto employees make less than minimum wage, they’re burned out working long shifts and are getting injured on the job. They say the turnover rate hovers around 60%.

As dozens of people lined the sidewalk in front of Loretto on Wednesday, shaded by trees on the third day of the strike, some employees shared stories of feeling unsafe at work.

Shiniki Davis-Jackson, a tech in the emergency department, said she was beaten up last week by a patient. The ER is supposed to have at least five technicians, who help with such tasks as getting patients into gowns to drawing blood, but only three were working, Davis-Jackson said. As she escorted a patient back to his room, “he started swinging on me.” She said the patient punched her in the face and on her side, kicked her leg and punched her head into a linen cart.

“I called out for co-workers, but there was no one there because there was no adequate staffing to come help,” Davis-Jackson said, adding that it took a few minutes for other employees to arrive to help. “It was very scary.”

She said she’s been assaulted before, a few years ago. It’s one of her biggest fears.

“I do not feel safe at work, even if it’s fully staffed,” Davis-Jackson said. “But when it’s short-staffed, it’s even worse because you don’t have the manpower to [handle] some of these strong patients.”

Loretto is a safety-net hospital on the West Side that serves mostly low-income Black patients. Davis-Jackson sees patients who are unhoused, drunk or high on drugs, and many have mental health conditions. It’s common to have patients who overdose on opioids. In other words, the patients have a lot of struggles, and they can be tough to treat.

Records show federal inspectors have long had concerns about Loretto not having enough staff and the ripple effect on patients. In recent years there was a suicidal patient left alone who attempted suicide in the bathroom in the ER waiting room. A pregnant patient died after the hospital failed to make sure an ultrasound was done “in a timely manner.” There haven’t been enough nurses to monitor patients recovering from surgery in the emergency department.

A Loretto spokeswoman has countered that the strike is over money, not patient safety. Non-union workers haven’t received a raise in three years and took a pay cut to prevent layoffs, the spokeswoman said in a statement this week.

After the patient’s death, Loretto Hospital leaders created a so-called plan of correction for inspectors. They vowed to make sure the triage waiting area would be monitored at all times by a clinical employee, such as a nurse. The ER director would audit a sample of charts every day to make sure all patients who come to the ER are screened. And staff in the emergency department would be educated once again about the importance of immediately providing life support, including CPR, among other changes

The Loretto spokeswoman declined a request for an interview about the patient’s death.

Kristen Schorsch covers public health and Cook County for WBEZ.