4 St. Joe's Nurses Sue Ascension Healthcare, Prime Healthcare Services: Wanton And Willful Conduct Cited

JOLIET, IL — The acrimony at Joliet's only hospital, St. Joe's, just won't go away. On Thursday, a Chicago law firm filed a civil lawsuit at the Will County Courthouse on behalf of four past and present nurses at St. Joe's Hospital: Cathy Wolff, Mary Sue Bulger, Paula Koranda and Cindy Poe.

The lawsuit co-defendants are the companies that currently own and formerly owned St. Joe's: Prime Healthcare Services and previous owner Ascension Healthcare. The lawsuits allege wanton and willful conduct harming these plaintiffs.

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The lawsuit accuses the hospital companies of "intentional infliction of severe emotional distress, or willful and wanton conduct in causing such distress. By severe understaffing of nurses, defendants have caused the plaintiff nurses to suffer fatigue and burnout and other physical symptoms," their lawsuit reads. "Plaintiffs seek such damages from defendants for their deliberate and systematic failure to staff enough nurses to meet the minimally safe nurse to patient ratios for St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet ... as defendants have a statutory duty to do under Illinois law, including the Nurse Staffing By Patient Acuity Act."

According to the 21-page lawsuit, "only plaintiffs Wolff and Bulger are still employed."

The filing indicates that Cathy Wolff is a senior registered nurse at St. Joe's and Mary Sue Bulger is a senior registered nurse at St. Joe's, while Paula Koranda was formerly employed as a senior nurse at St. Joe's for 52 years, while Code is a former nurse at St. Joe's who worked there in 2023 and part of 2024 and lives in Kane County.

The lawsuit notes that Wolff has been employed for over 20 years, and she's in the kidney dialysis unit providing nursing care to the intensive care unit and stable patients. The lawsuit revealed that "only two nurses, plaintiff Wolff and Melody Ryan, have been assigned to the dialysis unit at various times in the past. Ascension and Prime have instead substituted technicians for work done by nurses. However, the technicians can do only part of what nurses are trained and qualified to do and both Wolff and Ryan have far more work than two nurses can safely handle in a unit where extreme kidney failure has life and death consequences."

The lawsuit explains how the higher-ups with Prime and Ascension have had it out for Ryan and Wolff.

"For the repeated protests of unsafe conditions, both employers have treated Wolff and Ryan as troublemakers and acted in disregard of their concerns and would have engaged in discipline but for their union membership," the lawsuit asserts.

According to page six of the lawsuit, "Plaintiff Wolff often works well past legal limits on her working hours, because at least one qualified nurse must be present if only to keep the patient alive. Plaintiff Wolff sleeps only four to five hours each night because of her long hours of work. Two other nurses left the dialysis unit and their employment because of the unsafe staffing levels and the deaths of their patients ... For Wolff and Ryan, the physical and emotional stress from the understaffing in the dialysis unit is likely to increase as defendant Prime is now attempting to have a ratio of one nurse for three patients in dialysis for kidney failure instead of just two."

Page 10 of the lawsuit explains that over the 52 years that Koranda worked at St. Joe's Medical Center, the number of nurses at the hospital has dropped from 550 to 250 nurses overall. "In the last four years alone, many senior and highly qualified nurses like plaintiff Koranda have left employment at St. Joseph, either entirely or in part because of unsafe staffing under defendants Ascension and Prime or both."

Koranda worked in the medical/surgery unit, which was intended only for patients in or needing surgery. "Prior to Ascension's ownership of the St. Joseph Medical Center, the nurse-to-patient ratio in the surgery unit where Koranda worked was one nurse to four patients. By July 2024, when she left, and the sale to Prime had been announced, the ratio was one nurse to either five or six and even seven patients," the lawsuit outlined.

As for plaintiff Cindy Poe, she worked at another Ascension hospital, Resurrection Hospital in Chicago, and she accepted a transfer to St. Joe's in Joliet in January 2023. She was assigned to the surgery medical unit; however, St. Joe's ultimately made her a floater, the lawsuit noted. "For plaintiff Poe, this included especially the emergency room, which called for specialized nursing skill that plaintiff did not have, and where plaintiff Poe would never have applied to work because of the emotional demands it made upon her. Plaintiff Poe protested the assignments to units with unsafe staffing and filed numerous so-called 'assignments despite objections' or ADOs."

The lawsuit goes on to explain that "the immediate supervisor or plaintiff Poe warned her that plaintiff ought to resign because Defendant Ascension intended to discipline plaintiff on one pretext or another but actually in reprisal for her protests of unsafe staffing."

Poe even filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Public Health because of severe understaffing on May 12, 2024, where "there were no day shift nurses to relieve plaintiff Poe and other nurses who were on night shift in at least three separate patient care units. The night shift nurses, including Poe, though not obligated to stay and exhausted after 12-hour shifts, had no choice but to stay because Defendant Ascension had no nurses to relieve them."

The lawsuit indicated that Illinois Department of Public Health chose to cite Ascension but imposed no serious penalty.

"Emotionally drained and exhausted by experiences like May 12, 2024, and fearing reprisal from defendant because of her protests of unsafe staffing, plaintiff then left her employment at St. Joseph's involuntarily. Plaintiff Poe submitted her involuntary resignation on July 7, 2024."