At University of Miami Hospital, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East caregivers have a unique labor-management partnership that encourages employees and management to work together to develop solutions for issues at the hospital. Currently, nurses, transporters, IT staff and management are working on a labor-management project to more efficiently transport patients between departments, with the goal of reducing wait times and increasing patient satisfaction.



Since the project began, team members have held weekly meetings to evaluate past practices and data, develop solutions, implement their plan and evaluate new data so that adjustments can be made on the fly. The solutions that the team developed relied heavily on the input of UMH’s frontline registered nurses and healthcare workers.



“I’m glad that a couple of different departments were here so that we can hear everybody’s opinion on what’s going on in their department and we can come together as a team to improve things,” said Teresita Ramirez, a unit secretary at UMH. “We were able to hear each other out and come up with solutions to improve the issues.”