Medical professionals at Ascension hospitals are just recovering from the effects of a ransomware attack that targeted the health system on May 8. In addition to the challenge of temporarily relying on paper records, caregivers have long been grappling with the effects of being managed by outside staffing companies.
In the case of Ascension St. John in Detroit, this allowed TeamHealth, a medical staffing firm owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, to take over staffing in the emergency room. Blackstone operates by buying up large companies, and managing them to maximize profit.
"A lot of us have worked for multiple different staffing agencies over the years. And the problem is, a lot of us feel like we're being bought and sold like cattle," Dr. Michelle Wiener, an emergency medicine doctor at Ascension St. John, said.
As the private equity model has become more and more common across the country over the past several years, some physicians, like Wiener and her colleagues, have attempted to organize unions. The unionized doctors and nurses in her unit had been in contract negations with TeamHealth, and activated a brief strike in April. This came just under three weeks before the May 8 ransomware attack.
In early June, staff were notified that the contract with TeamHealth would not be renewed. Another company called Independent Emergency Physicians (IEP), an independent, physician-run group, would be taking over.
While Wiener expressed being optimistic about working with IEP, she remains concerned about the normalization and expansion of this private equity model across American health care systems.
"A lot of these staffing agencies are large. They are moving in because they have enough money that they can spread across the different markets. But their goals are not necessarily the quality of patient care in that, you know, sacred physician relationship, where you actually have time to sit down and talk to your patients," Wiener said. "Theirs is a model of, 'We need better efficiency. You need to be seeing more patients. We need to be billing better.'"
Listen to today's Stateside podcast to hear more of our conversation with Michelle Wiener.
See the story below to read more about the staffing model at Ascension St. John, and to read statements from IEP, Ascension, and TeamHealth:
See the story below to read more about the harrowing effects of the May 8 cyberattack on Michigan hospitals:
