When workers at Kindred Bay Area sit down to negotiate with the private equity firm that owns their hospital, they’re not just seeking more money for themselves; they’re trying to secure enough staff to fill shifts and gowns so they don’t have to wrap up their patients in bedsheets.
“There are times when we only have one (certified nursing assistant for the whole floor,” Alina Litinskaya, a nurse at Kindred Bay Area, recently told Alameda County officials. “It puts our license at risk. It puts our physical and mental health at risk.”
NUHW represents nearly 250 workers at the 99-bed hospital in San Leandro, and many of them have started taking their concerns public, addressing recent meetings of the local Alameda County Labor Federation and the Alameda County Public Health Commission.
Commissioners invited the workers back to a future meeting, when their concerns could be placed on their formal agenda and committee members could discuss potentially raising concerns about the county’s $4.2 million contract with Kindred.
Kindred operates long-term subacute hospitals for patients whose conditions don’t require a further stay at an acute care hospital, but still need round-the-clock care. The company has always had staff turnover issues because it pays less than acute-care hospitals, but the situation at Kindred’s 99-bed Bay Area hospital has continued to worsen since private equity giant Apollo Global Capital purchased it in 2021.
Apollo has loaded up the hospital with debt and deprived it of basic supplies. Workers regularly run out of gowns, blankets, towels, and catheters. Computers and printers on the hospital’s fourth floor have been broken for years.
Meanwhile, low wages have led to an exodus of caregivers, leaving the hospital dangerously understaffed, especially on weekends. Registered nurses are routinely assigned up to nine patients at once, in violation of state staffing requirements, and respiratory therapists often have to treat more patients simultaneously than safety rules allow.
“Management is like, ‘Don’t tell the families that we’re short-staffed,’” Litinskaya told members of the Alameda County Public Health Commission during a meeting earlier this month. “The other day, a manager asked me why I was turning a patient by myself. There are days I cannot get help, and it’s just me.”
The lack of staff and supplies has reached a crisis point at the hospital.
The rate of falls resulting in a major injury is five times the national average, and the rate of bedsores is double the national average, according to federal data. Since 2023, the California Department of Public Health has received 86 complaints about the hospital — far above the statewide average of 63.
“They’re overrunning our staff with patients,” Ken Quan, an imaging technician, told county commissioners. We have a huge problem with our retention rate. New nurses leave. It’s endangering our patients.”
