In today's newscast:
Nurses protest Watsonville neo-natal ICU closure
Nurses gathered this week at Watsonville Community Hospital to urge hospital leadership to reopen the neo-natal intensive care unit. The NICU cares for sick babies and closed on July 10 with no estimated reopen date.
Critical care charge nurse Roseann Farris has worked for Watsonville Community Hospital for 30 years. She calls the closure disheartening.
“ They keep telling us that they're gonna work on stabilizing the staffing so that they can reopen the NICU, but we haven't seen it," she said. "And they're just pushing it out and pushing it out.”
Interim CEO Tim Moran says the labor and delivery unit was short-staffed, and the nurses normally on NICU were needed there.
“ I made the decision that we would take the safe route and that we would close the NICU and work the NICU together with labor and delivery," he said.
Moran says the hospital is now training labor and delivery nurses in newborn care, which will free up some NICU nurses. Because of the closure, babies that need intensive care are currently transferred to other hospitals.
Data center regulations
State lawmakers passed a series of bills to regulate data centers like the Amazon project planned for Gilroy. CapRadio’s Laura Fitzgerald reports that one bill ensures data centers are subject to environmental review laws.
"Other (bills) aim to shift heightened electricity costs to data center operators rather than residential ratepayers and require developers to disclose information about water usage before a project can break ground," she said.
Tech giants have fought the increased regulations, but the bills now head to the governor's desk.
