Nurses in New Jersey begin strike over health plan in proposed contract

Almost all of the 1,300 nurses at the 584-bed Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., on Thursday began a strike over a fee that they would have to pay for medical procedures performed outside of their health plan network under a proposed contract, the New York Times reports.

Under a three-year proposed contract, which the nurses rejected on Aug. 16, the nurses or their family members would have to pay a fee of as much as $700 for hospital admissions and outpatient procedures performed outside of the health plan network, according to Jeanne Clark, a radiology nurse at the hospital and one of the negotiators for the Local 4-200 of the United Steelworkers Health Care Workers Council, which represents the nurses.

"This isn't a deductible as the hospital wants to call it but a penalty," Clark said, adding, "Our members come from four states in this region and cannot always get to providers that are in the network and to the hospitals that are covered."

The proposed contract also includes a 3% wage increase for the nurses in each of the next three years and a 10% increase in pension contributions, the Times reports.

Joshua Beshad, medical director of the hospital, said that, under the proposed contract, the nurses would not have to pay the fee for emergency medical procedures performed outside of the health plan network and that the network includes 20,000 physicians and Robert Wood Johnson hospitals and clinics in Rahway, Hamilton and East Brunswick, N.J. In a statement, hospital spokesperson John Patella said, "We want the community to know that the high quality of care they have come to expect from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital continues" during the strike (Smothers, New York Times, 8/25).