Divided Doctors Approve Public Hospital Labor Deal, With Three Facilities Voting No

 

A heated campaign had urged attending physicians to reject the pending contract with the city Health + Hospitals system, citing staffing and pay. 

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Claudia Irizarry Aponte

Additional reporting by Jonathan Custodio

NEW YORK - Attending physicians in ten of the city’s public hospitals system facilities voted to approve a new contract with Health + Hospitals and its affiliates, their union, Doctors Council SEIU, announced Monday, ending their protracted negotiations that culminated with the threat of a strike at several public hospitals earlier this month.

But a majority of physicians at three other H+H facilities — Jacobi Medical Center, North Central Bronx Hospital and Harlem Hospital Center — rejected the deal and will go back into bargaining with the city and the private employers who provide the staffing. 

The votes followed an organized systemwide opposition campaign that cited limited pay increases and a lack of measures to help retain staff as among reasons to vote no.

A Jan. 20 Zoom meeting of contract critics at one point had over 100 rank and file attendees, according to several sources who attended.

The agreement with NYC Health + Hospitals, Mount Sinai Health System, NYU and Physician Affiliate Group (PAGNY), who collectively employ some 2,500 doctors with H+H, includes salary increases, bonuses for doctors who worked through the pandemic, and retention bonuses to discourage staff turnover for designated specialties. 

But where city employee contracts typically make any pay increases retroactive to the expiration of the prior contract, none but the facilities affiliated with PAGNY get retroactive pay under the deal even though the last contract expired in September 2023. Doctors who voted against the contract also cited varying pay between doctors at different H+H facilities and slashed appointment times as reasons why they voted against the deal. State law prohibits public employees from striking, but because the doctors are jointly employed by private companies they were exempt from those rules under certain conditions. 

In a statement, union president Dr. Frances Quee said that the union is “committed to working with members from the facilities that did not approve the proposed contract.”

“Across the H+H system, no one knows more about the unique conditions of each hospital than the doctors there every day providing care for New York’s most vulnerable patients,” added Dr. Quee, who is a pediatrician at H+H Gotham Health in Manhattan.

Christopher Miller, a spokesperson for H+H, said in a statement that “We are pleased that the large majority of our unionized doctors voted to ratify the tentative agreement between our affiliates and the Doctors Council."

He added that "We believe the agreement is fair to our physicians, and also addresses the shared goals of doctor recruitment and retention. We want to ensure that we can continue to serve all New Yorkers who require health care, without exception.”

‘Corporation Logic’

In the lead-up to the agreement and as voting was underway, doctors who spoke with THE CITY alleged they were under pressure from their own union to accept what they viewed as a substandard deal.

But the blame, said one bargaining committee member who voted to reject the deal, ultimately rests on their employers.

“This seems to be the culmination of a union-busting campaign to keep doctors divided, take away benefits and cut our pay relative to inflation, and promote high turnover of doctors, which seems to be the business plan for Mount Sinai and PAGNY and NYU, which disadvantages patients,” said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from their employer.

In a memo distributed last week to unionized doctors at Elmhurst Hospital, which is affiliated with Mount Sinai, a union delegate urged members to vote to approve the contract because H+H’s affiliation with Mount Sinai could fall apart in the event that members rejected the contract — potentially jeopardizing the hospital’s residency programs, as well as federal funding for low-income patients. H+H employs many foreign-born doctors practicing in the U.S. using work visas, who would have to leave the country or face deportation if they lost their jobs.

“At this time, the harm of voting "No" far outweighs any potential benefits,” read the memo signed by union delegate Dr. Guangdong Liu. “Elmhurst Hospital is a vital part of the Queens community, patients depend on us for their care.”

Added Dr. Liu: “We have been waiting [for] this New Contract / tentative agreement for 16 months. While it is not everything we hoped for, it is an acceptable outcome for most of us.”

The doctors have been pushing for improved physician recruitment and retention across the system since their most recent contract expired September 2023. Doctors at four H+H facilities — Jacobi, North Central Bronx, Queens and South Brooklyn — earlier this month threatened to strike over the impasse. 

Jacobi and North Central Bronx have failed to recruit any rheumatologists since 2023, when the entire division resigned, according to the union.

Staffing levels have been a source of contention, as the public hospital system has slashed the length of primary care appointments from 40 minutes to 20 minutes in order to treat more patients with fewer doctors. 

Dr. Melanie McLennan, the addiction medical director at Elmhurst Hospital, said that the appointment time reduction amounted to “corporation logic” that would do little to help patient outcomes. She voted to reject the deal, which she said did not address the new appointment times.

“It’s a moral injury,” she said.

Dr. Gray Ballinger, a primary care physician at Queens Hospital, told THE CITY that while they voted against the contract, “We’re actually pretty thrilled with this.” Ballinger, who uses they/them pronouns, said they personally voted against the contract because it did not include back pay.

“It ended up being in our conversations that we knew there were going to be a lot of “yes” votes. We had a lot of younger doctors with both large loans and families and so people were just saying, ‘Hey, listen, this is not the raise we were asking for, but my family needs this right now,’” said Dr. Ballinger. 

“I don't have kids but who among us could say to a colleague that that's not important, right?”

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