Another unanticipated wrinkle in the Steward Health Care drama has come to light, and the head of the state’s largest nursing union says employees there are about to “be hosed, frankly.”

Julie Pinkham, executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, explained to policy makers on Thursday that the effects of the company’s bankruptcy aren’t felt only by patients, but they’re also having a very real impact on the company’s soon-to-be former employees and their families.

Speaking to the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s Advisory Council meeting on Thursday, Pinkham said that the nurses association has been “drinking from a firehose for the last three weeks” as now-bankrupt Steward works to transition half-a-dozen hospitals to new operators.

In addition to having to console their patients and assure them that care will continue, they’re finding themselves faced with new bosses and new benefit plans.

“This has been massively disruptive for the employees,” she told the Council.

Noting the doctors, nurses, and support staff employed at the company’s hospitals “have held firm, and worked through this entire crazy situation,” Pinkham said many are now grappling with having to find new doctors themselves, as the change in employer will lead to a change in health insurance providers.

“The employees are being transitioned to health insurance products within these institutions that are — at best — 30% percent of the relative choice of what they had, at about three times the cost,” she said.

If working at these hospitals is going to be more expensive for these employees and their families, Pinkham warned, “I don’t know how many people will be retained in these institutions.”

“The financial hardship implication to these employees who have held on delivering patient care, is probably in many cases not doable,” she said. “It’s not just the patients, every single one of these employees has been literally tossed up in the air.”