On November 18, 2025, the nurses of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) held a rally on the steps of City Hall before testifying before the city council on hospital safety and the state of nursing. Nancy Hagans, president of NYSNA and a nurse at Maimonides Medical Center, demanded in a statement that hospitals stop investing in artificial intelligence to prioritize their profitable businesses, and instead dedicate those funds to patient care. Maimonides Medical Center told Newsweek that the use of AI will always be under the guidance of the doctors and nurses responsible for the patients.
The nurses created the NYC Hospital Greed website where they highlighted poor working conditions and safety issues at the city’s hospitals. They also demand that private hospitals such as Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York-Presbyterian invest in safe patient care instead of risky speculation on artificial intelligence. The healthcare network is in a delicate situation, as Hagans explained in a statement to Newsweek, where he talks about the management being carried out by private hospitals and the attacks on healthcare safety by the Trump Federal administration.
The reality of healthcare in the United States
On November 18, 2025, a rally organized by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) took place on the steps of City Hall. This event occurred before testifying before the city council about hospital safety and the state of nursing.
According to Nancy Hagans, NYSNA president and nurse at Maimonides Medical Center, “Now is the time for hospitals to step up and take patient safety seriously. We have seen hospitals like Mount Sinai try to obscure the extent to which they have prioritized their profit-making enterprises over the patients of this city. We are here to say that enough is enough. The wealthiest hospitals need to stop playing with artificial intelligence and invest in caring for those who need it most”.
The nurses, who have been on the front lines of patient care and have been relentless in their fight to protect federal healthcare funding, are demanding that hospitals do their part. Additionally, they have also created a website called NYC Hospital Greed, where they expose the ways in which they believe hospitals are prioritizing profits over patient care and safety. Another one of their demands includes that private hospitals such as Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York-Presbyterian choose to “pay executives and make risky bets on artificial intelligence” instead of investing in patient safety.
In her testimony before the City Council’s Hospitals Committee, as reported by Newsweek, Hagans stated, “The first front is against the Trump federal administration and its attacks on our most vulnerable patients and healthcare funding. The second front is against the private hospitals in our city, which are fighting against all the achievements nurses have made to stabilize the workforce and improve and protect patient care”.
What do hospitals say about this?
The Maimonides Medical Center stated to Newsweek that it uses a “rigorous review process with direct input from physicians before implementing any new technology to improve patient care, including AI. AI offers powerful tools to enhance clinical outcomes and the patient experience, always under the guidance of doctors and nurses responsible for caring for our patients”.
Other centers, such as New York-Presbyterian, said, “We are always interested in innovations that can improve the speed and accuracy of examinations, diagnosis, and treatment, helping our teams deliver the best outcomes for patients and the most compassionate care”.
More testimonies
Hagans was not the only one to testify before the committee. The nurse from Mount Sinai West, Denash Forbes, also did, stating that the hospital had invested $100 billion in artificial intelligence technologies and software products instead of increasing the nursing staff. “The nurses were not involved in this discussion and had no role in creating the facility,” she said.
“Meanwhile, they have implemented new technologies that directly affect patient care, again without the input of nurses.” To make matters worse, she also explained that nurses have to review the work of the AI Sofiya for errors, and stated, “When hospitals try to make cuts like this in safe patient care, mistakes are made, biases are amplified, and often more work is created”.