MetroHealth Medical Center primary care providers have unionized due to concerns about patient care, citing the hospital’s practice of double-booking appointments without warning. This has led to hectic schedules for healthcare providers and impacted the quality of patient care.

Reasons for Unionization

The primary care providers, who are part of the Primary Care Providers Union (PCPU), are frustrated with the hospital’s scheduling system, which often leaves them with insufficient time to address patients’ complex medical conditions. According to Amy Catalani, a certified nurse practitioner, ‘It’s frustrating to be a provider wanting to take care of all your patients’ needs but having to choose what’s the most important to address at today’s visit, because there’s not necessarily enough time to do it all.’

MetroHealth’s rationale for double-booking visits is to offset gaps in schedules caused by high no-show rates. However, the healthcare providers remain resolute in their unionization effort, seeking quality-of-care changes that will benefit patients and providers.

National Trend

The unionization of MetroHealth doctors is part of a growing national trend, with about 8% of doctors nationally belonging to unions. According to John August, an expert in labor relations in healthcare, ‘Doctors want to reassert their ability to make decisions for their patients as opposed to having them made in some unseen corporate or other office which is telling physicians how they should practice medicine.’

Original reporting: Signal Cleveland — read the source article.