Here's the text of the article:
In an unusual move spurred by unhappiness with their employer, a group of doctors who treat patients in PeaceHealth’s Sacred Heart medical centers in Springfield and Eugene have voted to unionize.
Seeking greater say in patient care and working conditions, the doctors, known as hospitalists, voted on Tuesday to join the American Federation of Teachers, a trade union that represents 1.6 million workers nationwide in education, health care and public service.
It’s not uncommon for hospital workers such as nurses or facilities or maintenance staff to unionize. But it’s rare for physicians, the health care system’s elite employees, to do so.
Of the 36 hospitalists eligible to vote, 30 voted in favor of the union, three voted against and others were out of town, said Dr. David Schwartz, a spokesman for the union, which will be called the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association.
The hospitalists were spurred to unionize because PeaceHealth is considering no longer employing them directly. Instead, PeaceHealth is looking at having them employed by a separate, outside company that PeaceHealth would contract with, Schwartz said. Hospitalists are physicians whose main focus is the general medical care of hospitalized patients.
The leader of the teachers union lauded the move.
“The partnership between our union and doctors at Sacred Heart Medical Center is a great step forward for both patients and physicians,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “It’s a partnership based on mutual interests, mutual respect and a mutual desire to provide our members with the tools and conditions they need to advocate for the people they serve.
“Physicians unionize for reasons that are similar to their other health care colleagues,” she said. “To give them the voice and power they need to utilize their professional judgment, and ensure their patients receive safe, high-quality care; and get the respect they deserve.”
Schwartz said the new union at PeaceHealth is “the first type of union of its kind in the country.”
Calling the vote “rather historic,” Schwartz said, “this is giving an opportunity for hospitalists all around the country to unionize — to have that one voice and have bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Board.
“Even though it happened in our small community here, it’s going to have implications nationwide,” he said.
It is estimated that there are more than 30,000 hospitalists in the United States.
The local hospitalists’ action might also lead other types of workers at PeaceHealth to organize, Schwartz said.
“It might have a little bit of a domino effect,” he said. “It might kind of embolden people. That wasn’t our intention. We certainly don’t want to create an antagonistic relationship with the administration. None of the hospitalists thought that we’d be in a union, or would need to organize.”
Two other groups of workers have unions at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Centers: Oregon Nurses Association and the International Union of Operating Engineers for facilities engineers and biomedical engineers, said PeaceHealth spokeswoman Monique Danziger.
The hospital administration in May decided to seek an outside private company to employ the hospitalists instead of continuing to have PeaceHealth Medical Group employ the hospitalists, Schwartz said.
These outside national contracting groups have “very high turnover rates, which leads to very inconsistent quality of care,” he said.
“The thought of working for a national company whose primary goal is to make money off of us is a little disconcerting. It’s not why we got into medicine. It’s not the kind of medicine we want to practice.
“We just felt that we needed a way that we could have a stronger say and a stronger stand in being able to advocate for ... the safety of the patients in the hospital, and the union gives us a way we can do that,” Schwartz said.
For the time being, the hospitalists remain employees of PeaceHealth Medical Group. If PeaceHealth contracts out its hospitalist work, the contracting company would likely need to work with the now-unionized hospitalists.
PeaceHealth officials say they are committed to high-quality care.
“Though PeaceHealth prefers to maintain a direct and unrestricted relationship with our caregivers, the vote to choose union representation does not diminish our common purpose: We share with our hospitalists a deeply held commitment to provide safe, high quality care to our patients and their families,” Danziger said.
PeaceHealth decided to look at outsourcing hospitalist services at Sacred Heart Medical centers after Premier Inc. analyzed them early this year, Schwartz said.
Premier Inc. is a publicly traded health care performance improvement alliance of hospitals and other health care providers. Alan Yordy, president of PeaceHealth, a three-state hospital system based in Vancouver, Wash., has served on Premier’s board of directors since its inception in May 2013, according to Premier’s website. PeaceHealth is a member-owner of Premier, the website said.
Sacred Heart is in the midst of the “request for proposals” process for hospitalist services at RiverBend in Springfield and the University District, near the University of Oregon campus. John Hill, CEO of PeaceHealth Oregon West Network, declined to give specifics about the process or the groups that are bidding.
He said implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act has led health care organizations nationwide to seek more efficient ways to deliver services.
“We refer to this transition as the movement from volume, where health care organizations are paid for the number of patients treated, to value, where the focus shifts to payment for improving the overall health of the population and lowering costs,” Hill said.
“For Sacred Heart Medical Center, a key component of addressing this care transition is analyzing all care provided by hospital-based physicians,” Hill said. “First up in that process is the hospitalist service at Sacred Heart Medical Center’s RiverBend and University District hospitals.”
The next step for the hospitalists will be to have the vote to unionize certified by the National Labor Relations Board.
“Assuming certification, PeaceHealth honors the hospitalists’ choice and will prepare to enter into good-faith bargaining with the AFT to reach agreement on a mutually beneficial contract,” Danziger said.
The hospitalists work with more than 1,300 nurses at Sacred Heart Medical Center who are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association, an affiliate of AFT.
