A group of 40 hospital-based clinicians who work at Skagit Valley Hospital and Cascade Valley Hospital in Washington state have filed to unionize.
The doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, who work under a contract with Sound Physicians, are seeking to join the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD) with the aim of negotiating workplace issues, such as patient volumes, wages, and benefits, the union said in an announcement.
“There have been increasing patient volumes — along with patient medical complexity — but not enough physicians to appropriately tackle high patient volumes,” Michelle Pham, MD, who is among the physicians who have filed to unionize, told MedPage Today.
This “brings into question the delivery of safe, quality patient care,” Pham said, adding that “unionizing gives me hope that we as physicians have come together to have a voice and advocate for our patients.”
The reasons behind the group’s efforts to unionize are not unique, Pham noted.