Roughly 800 unionized workers at Butler Hospital entered the twelfth week of a strike on Thursday. They are striking over wages, benefits and workplace safety at the psychiatric hospital on Providence’s East Side.
The hospital’s President and Chief Operating Officer Mary Marran spoke with Lynn Arditi, health reporter at The Public’s Radio, about the strike’s impact on Rhode Island’s healthcare landscape.
Interview highlights
On what the strike means for Rhode Islanders in need of psychiatric care
Mary Marran: The impact on our patients because of our reduced capacity is that they typically end up in Emergency Rooms across the state. It’s actually a problem that Butler has been active in trying to solve over recent years. So what will happen is, if they can’t get to Butler, they present at their local Emergency Room and they end up boarding within that Emergency Room. That has an impact, obviously, on access to timely behavioral health services. It has an impact on everybody’s ability to access any care.
On whether the strike has negatively impacted the quality of care at Butler
Marran: No. I have a liaison (from the Rhode Island Department of Health) who serves on my management team that is essentially running the hospital right now. That individual takes part in daily reports, operational report-outs. When this started, I essentially said to the Department of Health, “Here you go. You can have full access to the hospital. If there’s something that is a risk or a concern happening, I want to know it, and I want to fix it, and I want to address it.” That’s a posture we’ve had with the Department of Health.
Even without the strike, we self-report, as we’re obligated to do, on most incidents. We are probably more conservative in terms of what’s reportable. We report anything that we think is of interest to the Department of Health. They were actually physically sitting in the building for several hours a day. They were surveilling the units as we implemented this new replacement workforce, and have been investigating complaints that have come at us from the usual direction — either patients or staff who share concerns with them. If they have a finding, we respond to it, we fix it, we address it. That’s been true before the strike, it’s even more so now, and I’m actually quite grateful to the department for working so closely with us through the strike.
On why Butler Hospital hasn’t reached a deal with striking workers
Marran: I have a responsibility to the future of the hospital and the sustainability of any deal I make, and the union chose to leave. I have to keep the hospital open. I have to spend the dollars required to do that. I have to preserve as much access to behavioral health as a nonprofit provider, and I take that job very seriously. I’m 70% publicly-funded. Forty-five percent of my patients are funded by Medicaid expansion products. Those are typically the lowest reimbursements that are received in health care. The remainder are Medicare. To that end, I cannot and will not promise and meet demands that far exceed what the market affords. That’s irresponsible, and I just can’t do it.
On what the future holds and the outlook for a settlement
Marran: We’re facing some headwinds, particularly with the cuts that have been implemented or are to be implemented in Washington because of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which is clearly going to have impacts for institutions like mine. I don’t know what those are yet, but I would say that I have worked hard to listen to what the union has asked for, and I have responded to each and every issue with offers that lead the market.
We do that because we are a leader in behavioral health, and we believe if any organization should lead the market, it’s Butler Hospital. We are internationally and nationally known for the services we provide because of the great people that do that work, many of whom right now are involved in this job action. I need them to know that I am keenly focused on that, and I think they need to ask their union if they are as well — their union leaders.
