For Immediate Release
June 13, 2024
Adrienne Enghouse
enghousea@yahoo.com
503-810-4489
SANDOVAL, N.M.—The president of the University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center used Chick-fil-A’s model of dealing with drive-through waits with how she would like her hospital to handle patient wait times, a comparison that the hospital’s union called “painfully and embarrassingly stupid.”
“It seems UNM SRMC President Jamie Silva-Steele wants drive-through healthcare: Just scare up an extra nurse or other healthcare professional at the snap of a finger when there are a lot of patients. This is painfully and embarrassingly stupid,” said Adrienne Enghouse, R.N., United Health Professionals of New Mexico’s chief organizer.
President Jamie Silva-Steele said in a memo to staff this week that when Chick-fil-A workers see drive-through lines getting too long, they add staff to quickly process orders. “This is adjusting to customer pull,” she wrote.
“Fast food restaurants have more people on the cook line grilling chicken nuggets and fries than we have in the OR to clean up after a surgery or in the emergency department to handle the number of patients who need care. How dare she compare staffing ratios at Chick-fil-A to staffing ratios at our hospital. She needs to negotiate a contract that addresses staffing ratios and recruitment and retention of qualified health professionals to deliver quality patient care,” Enghouse said.
Staffing is one of the many quality-of-healthcare issues the union wants to discuss at the bargaining table. However, the hospital has been fighting this in a series of court cases.
“Silva-Steele is showing what she really wants, which is a hospital more concerned with the bottom-line, using a fast-food drive-through model of business rather than ensure the community has a high-quality, well-functioning, professional hospital,” Enghouse said.
# # #