Last week, nurses from the United Nurses and Allied Professionals union held an informational picket line outside Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence.
According to union leaders, the picket was held to raise awareness of stalled negotiations between UNAP — which represents employees at Fatima Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center and Prospect CharterCARE Home, Health and Hospice — and the CharterCARE hospital system’s new owner.
In an interview with The Herald, UNAP President Lynn Blais said that they remain far from an agreement with CharterCARE, with specific details related to subcontracting, wages and staffing levels still on the table. The union has also condemned CharterCARE for the closure of home health services, which CharterCARE says were not operational at the time Centurion took over.
Blais noted that, in August, the union received the authorization to issue a strike notice if they deemed it necessary. According to Chris Callaci, the general counsel and chief negotiator for the union, the union will issue a 10-day strike notice if sufficient progress on the contract is not made by Oct. 9.
The Centurion Foundation, which owns CharterCARE, and CharterCARE itself have not responded to The Herald’s inquiries regarding the strike authorization.
Blais explained that nurses at Fatima Hospital have been unionized for nearly three decades, and the union was not looking to renegotiate the entire contract. “But they came in with proposals that would probably rewrite 90% of the contract, and not for the better,” she said.
“CharterCARE has made a competitive wage and benefit package offer at the bargaining table and UNAP has not yet provided a full response to that, despite having it since August,” Otis Brown, vice president of marketing and external affairs for CharterCARE, wrote in an email to The Herald.
The union and CharterCARE will negotiate every day between Oct. 5 and 9 with a mediator present, according to Blais.
Centurion — a Georgia-based nonprofit that had previously never owned a hospital — received conditional approval to purchase CharterCARE from its previous owner, Prospect Medical Holdings, in June 2024. But the sale was delayed by over a year while the organization struggled to secure the necessary funds.
Amid legal threats to close the hospitals, the R.I. legislature passed a bill in February to provide an $18 million backstop for the sale, with funds placed in a state account should Centurion prove unable to make its bond payments. Afterwards, Centurion was able to complete its purchase with $101 million in bonds.
“After the closing of that transaction in March, they would have in excess of $100 million on the balance sheet to cover operation costs,” Callaci said. “We expected that we would get a competitive wage and benefit and working condition package — and a commitment that they would preserve services.”
Prior to the sale, the hospitals had been losing millions of dollars per year. When hospitals are unable to pay their bills, they often slash staffing levels and cut less profitable programs, The Herald previously reported.
Otis Brown wrote that Prospect Medical Holdings made the decision to close home services in late 2025 “based on declining volume, significant monthly losses and the availability of more than 60 competing home care agencies.”
“We made the Department of Health and Attorney General's office aware of the closing and current status,” he wrote. “The union’s allegation that we have violated any regulatory condition is not true.”
Megan Skinner, deputy communications director for the Attorney General’s office, confirmed in an email to The Herald that they were aware of Prospect’s intentions to stop offering home health services “prior to the closure of the transaction between Prospect and Centurion.”
The final deal requires Centurion to gain the Attorney General’s office’s approval before closing certain essential health services, including home health. But “that condition only applies to actions taken after the closing of the transaction,” Skinner wrote. Since the closure of home health services occured before the change in ownership, “the recent actions taken regarding this program would not require notice or approval by this office,” Skinner wrote.
But according to Callaci, Centurion committed to investing $100,000 into home health in their initial Hospital Conversion Act application in 2023, and the company is now going back on its word. Callaci said the union is now concerned CharterCARE will cut other programs.
Callaci said this is “particularly troubling” when considering the $18 million backstop for the sale which was funded by taxpayer money.
“R.I. taxpayers put that money up. The General Assembly and the governor’s office put that money up, and they did it not blindly,” he said. “They did it based on the commitments from these guys that they would preserve services and take care of the workforce.”
Talia is a metro section editor covering the health and environment and community and culture beats. She is a junior from Bethesda, MD studying history and international and public affairs. In her free time, she enjoys exploring Providence one wrong turn at a time.
Emily Feil is a university news and metro editor covering staff & student labor and RISD. She is from Long Beach, NY and plans to concentrate in English and international & public affairs. In her free time, she can be found watching bad TV and reading good books.
