Allina Health is facing more than $83,000 in proposed fines related to nurses who were hurt by workplace violence at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis over the past year.
The fines by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry have not been made public while Allina contests them, but they were disclosed Tuesday by the Minnesota Nurses Association, the union representing registered nurses in most Twin Cities hospitals.
Nurses are being asked to take on more patients at once, especially at night, which is allowing more incidents to erupt, said Andrew Dunn, a union representative for Abbott nurses. “When there’s less staff to address an emergency concern, relating to mental health or violence, it means there is slower response times and it means existing assaults get more serious.”
The union highlighted the fines as it sets its lobbying agenda for the 2025 session of the Minnesota Legislature and begins negotiations with hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth over new three-year contracts for their nurses. Workplace safety is a top issue for nurses; a 2023 union survey found 45% of its members had experienced physical violence or abuse at the bedside at some point in their careers.
Allina on Nov. 27 contested all the citations that were classified as serious, and noted in a statement that seven were related to one patient. The health care provider offers violence prevention training to nurses.
“Hospitals throughout the country are experiencing the troubling trend of increased violent events,” the statement said. “Allina Health takes significant precautions to mitigate violence to ensure the safety and well-being of our care team members while providing care to those who need it.”
According to documents released by the union, the state labor investigation found 15 serious incidents at Abbott Northwestern and levied fines ranging from $4,000 to $7,200 for each one. The citations don’t specify what happened in each incident, other than that there was an “absence of an effective workplace violence prevention program” when they occurred.
Allina endured a high-profile incident of violence at its Buffalo clinic in 2021, when a patient walked into the waiting room with a gun and shot five people, killing one of them. But the rise in violence has more to do with patients in ER bays or hospital beds who become agitated and lash out. Delirium and confusion are common problems that lead to violence, often when patients are recovering from drug overdoses or emerging from sedation.
