St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass. — where nurses have filed more than 600 safety and staffing complaints since July — was found noncompliant with some CMS conditions during a recent visit from The Joint Commission.
The Joint Commission's Office of Quality and Patient Safety confirmed the findings in a Feb. 23 email to Mary Sue Howlett, PhD, RN, associate director of the nursing division at the Massachusetts Nurses Association, who drafted the complaints with and on behalf of nurses at St. Vincent Hospital.
According to the email correspondence obtained by Becker's, The Joint Commission conducted an on-site review of the hospital Feb. 14 and found it "non-compliant with applicable Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Conditions."
The Joint Commission's public information policy prohibits it from sharing specific findings or the complete report. However, the email said that St. Vincent Hospital "will need to demonstrate evidence of standards compliance to maintain accreditation by The Joint Commission."
A spokesperson for The Joint Commission declined Becker's request for further comment. Its quality check website, which lists all publicly available information, gives Feb. 15 as the last on-site survey at St. Vincent Hospital and March 1 as the last on-site survey at its primary stroke center. The hospital still has its accreditation seal on the website.
The hospital's parent company, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, has not returned Becker's requests for comment on The Joint Commission's visit. In a Feb. 14 statement, the hospital alleged the union's claims were "unfounded" and accused it of "organizing publicity stunts, spreading false rumors and intimidating our leadership."
The Massachusetts Nurses Association recently went public with a series of complaints raised to The Joint Commision, CMS, the state Department of Public Health's licensure and certification division, and the state Board of Registration in Nursing. In January alone, nurses filed 102 complaints alleging unsafe staffing practices. The union alleges that current ratios are in "blatant violation" of a contract ratified in December 2021, which agreed to update staffing practices and ended a 301-day nurse strike.
In addition to the Joint Commission, the Department of Public Health has been investigating the nurses' complaints, according to a March 6 news release from the union.