Listen Up, Eric: ‘Doing it Right’ Means Signing a Pact With NYC’s Doctors!
Members of Doctors Council SEIU have put Mayor Eric Adams on notice: New York City’s physicians need a contract now.
By Bob Hennelly
Dozens of attending physicians with Doctors Council SEIU made the trip up to Gracie Mansion this week to deliver a petition signed by over 1,000 of their colleagues to Mayor Eric Adams, warning that a lapsed contract is undermining recruitment and retention of staff. This, the union maintains, has further created gaps in staffing that undermines the quality and continuity of healthcare NYC Health + Hospitals.
A strike is possible by at least 2,000 of the physicians who care for H+H patients and are not subject to New York State’s Taylor Law—because they are actually affiliated with entities including the Physician Affiliate Group of New York and Mount Sinai.
"The New York City Public Health System is dependent upon a physician workforce that is mission-driven and devoted to providing care to the population which we serve,” said Dr. Steven Hahn, Internist at Jacobi Medical and member of Doctors Council SEIU. “We are proud to work in the nation’s largest public hospital system and provide care for all New Yorkers regardless of their status and ability to pay. Some of us have made H+H our home for decades. But the promise of our dedicated doctors is going unfulfilled because of the persistent inability to recruit and retain the physician workforce we need.”
The Doctors Council SEIU stresses that it has held multiple rallies across three boroughs, where members have highlighted “critical issues such as understaffed emergency rooms on evenings and weekends, prolonged delays in necessary surgeries, department closures, and significant backlogs for routine patient check-ups.”
"We have large staffing shortages in every hospital and several of the mayoral agencies,” said Dr. Jasmeet Sandhu, a physician at Mt. Sinai Elmhurst Hospital and member of Doctors Council SEIU. “Health and Hospitals relies on Locum Tenens doctors to cover the big gaps that should be filled by longterm dedicated physicians. An increase in patient volume, high turnover, and physician burnout are all compounding this problem. This affects all New Yorkers, not just the frontline doctors of Doctors Council. This crisis has direct negative impacts on our patients—Mayor Adam’s constituents.”
The Doctors Council SEIU contract expired in August of last year, and was extended until July 31.
According to Dr. Damien Archbold, the failure by the municipal hospital system to address the staffing crisis is making the existing racial disparities in healthcare even more pronounced. In the borough of Queens, site of H+HC’s Elmhurst Hospital, that was so hard hit during COVID, the ratio of residents to a hospital bed is 1.5 beds per thousand. ”In Manhattan that ratio is 6.4 beds per 1,000,” Dr. Archbold said on WBAI.
Work-Bites raised the union’s concerns at the mayor’s Tuesday press conference, highlighting how the expired contract has led to a retention and recruitment crisis at the very same time the city is experiencing a 20-percent increase in emergency room visits and admissions, as well as a surging immigrant population in dire need of health care.
“We have to give them a contract,” Mayor Adams said. “You guys know how I feel about settling contracts for city employees. We've done one-hundred-percent of our union contracts. I think we're up to ninety-six-percent of the others. No one has done it better…getting these contracts settled and we're getting ninety-six, ninety-seven-percent ratification rate. We have been able to settle the contract of our ferry boat operators after 13 years, our police officers. I think over eight years, DC 37 members…what we have been able to do with them.”
The mayor continued, “So, we get it. We need our doctors—and particularly in our Health + Hospital system. [Office of Labor Relations Commissioner] Renee [Campion] is a champion. She does it right; she protects our city's dollars. But she also knows that we want to be fair to our city employees, and we're going to do it. It's going to be done.”
In a follow up, Work-Bites asked the Mayor Adams if the federal government should be required to cover the cost of newly-arrived immigrants to the United States.
“Yes, that's interesting,” Adams said. “I was just talking to someone the other day, and I think the federal government not only should be playing a role in our healthcare…but I'll tell you another place they should be playing a role…they should be playing a role in public safety.”