Unionized hospitalists at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend plan a one-day picket this month, an action that management calls surprising given progress toward the group's first contract.
Representatives of the Springfield, Ore., hospital held a bargaining session with the hospitalists last week, said Debra Miller, system vice president of labor and caregiver relations for parent system PeaceHealth, based in Vancouver, Wash.
The hospitalists created a union local in December 2014, the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association.
The outsourcing of physicians and advanced practice clinicians is commonplace across the industry. Increasingly, physician groups are selling their practices to hospitals or third-party staffing companies to gain access to business practices and technology that help manage workloads and measure quality.
The PeaceHealth hospitalists have said they formed the union because the hospital intended to outsource the work to a third-party staffing company. Dr. David Schwartz, president of the hospitalist union, contends PeaceHealth wanted to outsource the department to save money, not to increase throughput. He said the 30 employed physicians in the bargaining unit were meeting national standards in throughput.
Miller said the informational picket set for June 23 will not affect the hospital's operations.
