July 2, 2025
RE: Deliberate Understaffing, Escalating Risk, and the Growing Patient Care Crisis
Stephanie,
We are writing with urgency — because the situation inside East Liverpool City Hospital is not sustainable, not safe, and not acceptable. Nurses are sounding the alarm. And so far, you’ve chosen to ignore it.
On Friday, we wrote to you and other hospital administrators in good faith, asking for your plan to safely staff the hospital and address the escalating staffing crisis and its impact on patient care, mortality, and morbidity.
We received no response. Not even an acknowledgment. Crickets.
This silence is not just disrespectful — it’s dangerous. When nurses raise the alarm about unsafe conditions and patient harm, and leadership says nothing, that is a failure of your leadership, ethics, and basic human decency.
To make matters worse, as of July 1st, the hospital unilaterally ended our long-standing pickup incentive agreement — a program that has helped keep this facility running during years of chronic short staffing. For three years, this incentive served as a critical stopgap to stabilize units, fill shifts, and protect patients.
Instead of working with us to strengthen staffing and improve retention, you’ve ripped away one of the last and only tools we had to prevent collapse — and replaced it with an outdated, ineffective “crisis shift” policy that doesn’t reflect the brutal reality we face daily: every shift is a crisis.
Let the facts speak for themselves:
- 27 unsafe staffing reports (ADOs) were filed in June alone
- 20 RN vacancies remain out of a 120-member bargaining unit — nearly 17% unfilled. This doesn’t even account for medical leaves, orientation, or other non-working statuses that further reduce staffing at the bedside.
- Med-Surg night shift is now being staffed at 7:1 ratios, with rumors of a plan to move to 8:1 — far beyond even your own internal guideline of 6:1
- The ICU is being staffed above a 2:1 ratio, and the ED is below core staffing levels needed to safely care for incoming patients. These are the sickest, most vulnerable patients — the ones who crash without warning. And you’re shortchanging their care.
This is not a staffing plan. This is patient abandonment.
You are a nurse. You know the research. You know that when nurses are assigned more than four patients in Med/Surg, patient mortality increases. Delays in care. Preventable complications. Avoidable deaths. Every additional patient raises the risk.
And yet, under your leadership, this hospital is choosing to normalize 7:1 — and possibly 8:1.
Just one week ago, you told staff that East Liverpool City Hospital is “financially sound” and that leadership is “committed to providing exceptional and compassionate care.” But your actions suggest otherwise. You are knowingly implementing staffing practices that increase the likelihood that patients will die — and for what?
No one wants to bury their mother, father, sister, brother, son, or daughter because YOU choose profits over people. Were you being honest with our staff, our community — or was it just corporate spin?
When you say the hospital is for-profit, at least you’re being honest. That may be the only honesty we’ve seen.
No one should lose a loved one because you protected a bottom line instead of a life. Your continued refusal to meet with frontline nurses — to even respond to our concerns — is actively fueling this crisis. It is harming our patients. It is driving nurses to the brink. And it is causing lasting moral injury to the professionals you rely on to keep this hospital running.
Let us remind you: You are a nurse. You know the difference between safe care and unsafe shortcuts. You know what it means to hold a patient’s life in your hands — and to have no backup.
We are once again calling on you to meet with us immediately and work together on meaningful, immediate solutions:
✅ Restore and strengthen the pickup incentive
✅ Commit to enforceable safe minimum staffing standards and transparent data
✅ Fill the vacancies and stabilize the workforce
✅ Stop risking lives for the sake of corporate convenience, profits, and executive bonuses
If you won’t act, we will. We will not stop until our patients and our profession are protected.
This is our S.O.S. Don’t let it go unanswered.
Sincerely,
