Nurses picket outside Suburban Community, Lower Bucks hospitals amid union contract negotiations.

Nurses are holding rallies outside Prime Healthcare hospitals in the Philadelphia suburbs in an escalation of their union’s negotiation tactics. The contracts for the roughly 200 nurses who staff Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital both expired on Oct. 12.

Contentious issues during the negotiations have centered around the union’s demands for increased staffing and better benefits to help retain staff, according to the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, or PASNAP, which represents nurses in both hospitals.

Based in Southern California, Prime Healthcare is one of the largest for-profit hospital systems in the U.S., with more than 40 hospitals in 16 states. In Pennsylvania, Prime hospitals include Philadelphia’s Roxborough Memorial Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital. Suburban Community Hospital is also part of the Prime system, but it is owned by the company’s nonprofit arm, Prime Healthcare Foundation.

Prime has been negotiating with the PASNAP locals representing nurses at Suburban Community and Lower Bucks over new collective bargaining agreements since early September. Michelle Aliprantis, a spokesperson for Prime, said in a statement that the company is hopeful they will come to an agreement soon.

“While we are disappointed that the union has elected to move forward with picketing, we respect their right to do so as part of the negotiation process,” Aliprantis said in an e-mailed statement. “We look forward to reaching an agreement that benefits our employees and all those we serve.”

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On Monday, nurses gathered with supporters outside Suburban Community Hospital in Norristown holding signs that read “It’s Prime time to respect nurses.” Nurses at Lower Bucks will hold a similar informational picket Monday.

Shannan Giambrone, an ICU nurse who has worked at Suburban Community for 23 years, said that a key issue is the health care plan that Prime offers to the nurses employed by the system’s hospitals. Prime requires its nurses to seek care at Prime facilities, she said, but in recent years has cut services making it harder to access care. When they go out of network, nurses have challenges getting reimbursed.

“We struggle to find providers that Prime considers in-network,” Giambrone said.

Just last month, Prime laid off more than a dozen nurses and therapy professionals who staffed a behavioral health unit at Suburban Community, WHYY News reported. A Prime spokesperson said that the unit is not closed, but hospital staff told news reporters they are unable to admit new patients to the unit and refer them elsewhere instead.

Giambrone said the nurses’ negotiating demands are reasonable.

“We aren’t asking for an exception to the rule,” she said. “We are just asking to be treated fairly.”