Fitch Watching New Jersey-Area Hospitals & Health Systems As Nursing Strikes Averted.NEW YORK -- Health Professionals and Allied Employees The Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE) is a health care labor union in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that represents registered nurses and other health care workers in hospitals, nursing homes, blood banks and clinics in the public and private sector. (HPAE HPAE Health Professionals and Allied Employees HPAE High-Performing Asian Economies ) have voted to ratify agreements to renew multi-year labor contracts for their members at Southern Ocean County Hospital (SOCH SOCH Southern Ocean County Hospital ; rated 'BBB+' by Fitch), Palisades Healthcare System, Inc. (Palisades; rated 'BBB-'), and Pascack Valley Hospital Pascack Valley Hospital (PVH) is a 291 bed hospital, located at 250 Old Hook Road, Westwood, New Jersey. History Pascack Valley Hospital opened on June 1, 1959 as an 86-bed community hospital. It has undergone several expansions and grew to 291 beds. Association (Pascack; rated 'BB'). Fitch will continue to monitor this situation and any effects on the operational and financial profiles of SOCH, Palisades and Pascack, including costs incurred related to strike contingency plans. E[acute accent]Union issues included staffing levels, retirement security and benefits, and classification of charge nurses that coordinate care. The HPAE had intended to call strikes as early as June 2, 2006 if new labor contracts were not finalized which could have potentially disrupted the provision of care, increased agency expense and decreased utilization statistics for the hospitals. The hospitals had contingency plans in place for nursing coverage if the union nurses had decided to go on strike. E[acute accent]Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use Terms of Use are rules set up by the owner of an intellectual property or service to govern how they may be legally used. In many cases, terms of service are used as a contractual agreement between a company and users of a service they provide. of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, www.fitchratings.com. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures Policies and Procedures are a set of documents that describe an organization's policies for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill the policies. They are often initiated because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site. |
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