Health care professionals representing all major labor unions at PeaceHealth RiverBend and University District hospitals rallied Thursday to stop a plan to outsource physician services, increase shift hours, and lay off staff. KLCC鈥檚 Tiffany Eckert asked one of the hospital physicians to explain the current dispute.
Dr. David Swartz is a hospitalist physician at RiverBend in Springfield. A hospitalist is a doctor that only takes care of patients who are admitted in hospital.
鈥淲e are there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Fully staffed, he says.鈥�
Schwartz says he and the other hospitalists are angry about PeaceHealth鈥檚 attempt to outsource them to a private management company. He says that will lead to more expensive, less effective health care.
鈥淭hese companies are terrible care. They鈥檙e gonna come in and we鈥檙e gonna work in less hospitalists, we鈥檙e going to be seeing more patients, says Schwartz. 鈥淚t鈥檚 all gonna be about generating revenue. We鈥檙e doctors, this isn鈥檛 the kind of care we want to provide for our patients. We live here. This is our community.鈥�
Schwartz is now the president of the Pacific North West Hospital Medicine Association.
鈥淚t is the only specialist specific union in the country and the only hospitalist union in the country.鈥�
The union was formed when PeaceHealth administrators tried to outsource their jobs back in 2014. After organized hospitalists fought back, the hospital reconsidered.
In the four years Dr. Schwartz has worked at RiverBend, there have been three different CEO鈥檚. Currently, Joe Mark is serving as interim CEO until another takes over in August. Schwartz says the outsourcing plan was endorsed by executives who don鈥檛 know the hospital or the community.
鈥淪o here we are in 2018 and what are they doing? They want to outsource hospitalists, they want to cut nursing positions, they want to cut CNA positions, says Schwartz. 鈥淭he frustrating part about this is, everybody who works there knows it鈥檚 not going to work. You know who doesn鈥檛 know this? The CEO who wasn鈥檛鈥� here 4 years ago.鈥�
Hospitalists in the PNWHMA have been working without a union contract since October 2017. In negotiations earlier this week, the sticking point remained outsourcing.
KLCC will reach out to PeaceHealth administration for their side of the story before union negotiations resume next month.
Copyright 2018