WHC Nurses Warn of Threat of "Taco Bell" Care

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Washington Hospital Center visitors and patients were greeted yesterday morning by nurses who warned against the threat of “Taco Bell” healthcare. Washington Hospital Center is outsourcing its dialysis services to DaVita Inc., a Colorado-based for-profit with a record of replacing experienced nurses with less-experienced – and less expensive – workers. “To me it’s not about the patients,” DaVita CEO Kent Thiry has said. “If I had 1,400 Taco Bells and 32,000 people worked in them, I would be doing all the same stuff.” A former employee of Mitt Romney’s Bain consulting firm, Thiry last year collected $17.5 million in pay. “It’s a safety issue,” WHC nurse Rajini Raj said. “Instead of highly-trained nurses, DaVita would replace them with techs, who can have as little as a year of training. Basically, they want to outsource our dialysis center.” A flyer distributed Monday by the WHC nurses – members of National Nurses United – cited examples of cost-cutting by DaVita that threatened patient safety, including dialyzer reuse up to 50 times, filters that had been used on other patients and a 2011 Colorado US Attorney’s grand jury investigation into allegations that the company over-used anemia drugs to boost Medicare reimbursements. The nurses and their union are calling for a public hearing by the DC State Health Planning and Development Agency “to protect patients from ‘Taco Bell’ care at Washington Hospital Center.” - report/photo by Chris Garlock; photo: WHC RN Jaquie Sorkin leafleting