Albany Medical Center nurses are raising the alarm about a Department of Health report. The report cited at least 480 violations of the state’s safe staffing law.

The nurses said they had been trying to get a copy of the report and finally obtained it through a Freedom of Information Law request. The claim the hospital has submitted corrective action plans to the state as recently as Feb. 2, but they do not address the staffing crisis.

Nurses have been working without a contract. Negotiations restarted on Monday after a half-day session in January. However, the union said at a news conference that there has not been any progress in resolving this issue. There were no negotiations on Tuesday.  

The nurses specifically cited 32 staffing violations in the neonatal intensive care unit. There are supposed to be no more than two patients per nurse.

Nurse Jaime Alaxanian, a member of the bargain committee and staffing committee, said burnt-out nurses in the NICU are “going home crying while the hospital continues to violate the staffing plan they agreed to.”

The hospital is continuing to rely on expensive travel nurses to fill the staffing void, according to Alaxanian.

The union pointed out that the travel nurses are provided by the Albany Med Health System Staffing Alliance, which is owned by Albany Med, so it is making a profit.

There has not been meaningful progress in the negotiations, according to Jennifer Bejo, a local leader for the New York State Nurses Association.

“Management refused to listen to our concerns and myriad of issues we face as front-line nurses,” she said. 

NewsChannel 13 reached out to Albany Medical Center for comment and spokesman Matt Markham provided this statement:

“The items identified in the report date back as far as 16 months. At no point during that time was patient care ever compromised, and quality care continued. In addition, we made great strides in our perennial recruitment and retention efforts. We hired more than 300 nurses in 2024. Our RN turnover rate is 3 percent less than the national average.

Our focus now is not on the past, but rather, it is on the care we provide today and in the future. We agree with NYSNA that recruiting even more nurses is critical to our mission. Allowing our nurses to vote on a contract is the way to do it. Albany Med’s proposal includes robust enhancements to salaries and benefits and will reinforce a competitive position in the market. Unfortunately, we cannot implement all those enhancements until the union permits a vote. Our proposal also preserves each nurse’s choice to become a dues-paying union member or not.

It all comes down to giving our nurses a choice. That’s what we want, and anything else is a distraction.”