Nurses, healthcare workers at America’s largest hospital system speak out

NASHVILLE, TN -- Eight months into a global pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans, frontline healthcare workers at the largest hospital system in the US, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) Healthcare (NYSE: HCA), are raising concerns about the deaths of their coworkers and an acute lack of access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) directly to investors in the company.

In a letter, nurses and healthcare workers call on HCA investors, such as CALPERS, the nation’s largest public pension fund, to seek the disclosure of key information from the company regarding what workers are calling, “HCA’s widespread management failures” in response to the COVID-19 crisis.



In recent quarters, HCA has reported significant profits while cutting back significantly on supply expenses: about $1.75 billion, down from nearly $2.2 billion in the same period last year (a decrease of roughly 17%).

These short term profits are at the expense of essential frontline caregivers and the health and safety of patients, families, and communities, caregivers say, noting that, as a recent lawsuit documents, “HCA asked us to work without adequate personal protective equipment, including masks, gowns, hairnets, gloves, and facial shields; required employees to work despite having COVID-19 symptoms; pressured employees not to take precautionary measures against COVID-19 exposure, such as sanitization, if they hindered efficiency; ignored worker complaints about lack of PPE; had inadequate contact tracing, and pressured workers to ignore workplace-safety measures. HCA’s troubling approach has become major news during the pandemic.”

In their letter, the HCA employees ask to meet directly with investors, and suggest investors ask HCA management to provide investors with the following information:

1. The total number of HCA employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 with detail by title, race, and ethnicity.
2. The total number of HCA employees who have died from COVID-19 with detail by title, race, and ethnicity.
3. The company’s infectious disease prevention and control plan, including the company’s practices regarding hazard identification and assessment, employee training, and provision of personal protective equipment.
4. An assessment of the company’s current PPE supplies and expected available PPE for the duration of the pandemic.
5. An assessment of how the company has determined that the current and expected future PPE is adequate to protect its employees from COVID-19 infection, and specifically how the current and expected future PPE is adequate to implement the infectious disease control and prevention plan requested above in #3.
6. A detailed accounting of the company’s supply expense decrease in the second quarter of 2020, as compared to the second quarter of 2019, ideally showing specific supply categories (especially PPE) and the expenditure amounts in each category.
7. Any modifications of senior executive compensation during the COVID-19 pandemic, including whether or not the company is incentivizing executives through specific COVID-19 metrics to protect patients, workers, and investors.

Published October 30, 2020