KAISER PERMANENTE: NURSES, HOSPITALS SQUARE OFF

      "At dueling news conferences Wednesday, Bay Area hospitals
 and a nurses union sparred over the impact of a two-day nurses
 strike planned next week at Kaiser Permanente hospitals," the San
 Jose Mercury News reports.  Kaiser hospital administrators are
 calling the January 28-29 walkout "a threat to public health
 during one of the worst flu seasons on record."  The Hospital
 Council of Northern and Central California said a strike by
 Kaiser nurses will leave the Bay Area's remaining hospitals with
 a dangerously heavy patient load (Feder, 1/22). "[The California
 Nurses Association] is gambling with the public's health.  It is
 inappropriate and unprofessional to use the community's health as
 a bargaining chip," said hospital council regional vice president
 Lynn Baskett (DeBare, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/22).  The CNA
 said that Kaiser officials are, themselves, at fault for
 endangering patients through past cutbacks in nursing, emergency
 and acute care services at hospitals (Mercury News 1/22). 
      RX REDUX
      The planned strike of 7,500 registered nurses will impact
 all 54 of Kaiser's Northern California hospitals, clinics,
 laboratories and administrative offices.  Kaiser administrators
 plan to handle the shortage by importing temporary nurses from
 other areas, as well as canceling elective surgeries and
 transferring patients to other hospitals.  The strike will be the
 fourth since the contract for registered nurses expired one year
 ago.  "Contract negotiations broke down during Thanksgiving
 weekend and have not resumed," Mercury News reports (1/22).