Some doctors are pushing to organize the 10,000 attending physicians within the University of California system, setting in motion what could become the largest union of employed physicians, organizers say.
Factors driving the organization effort include hiring freezes, increasing patient loads, long hours, and clinician burnout, some of the attendings said during a news conference at UCSF Medical Center late last week.
Some of them had been members of the Committee of Interns and Residents through Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare. Earlier this month, the 6,400 resident physicians and fellow members of that union reached a tentative contract with UC Health.
The attendings would instead be unionized through SEIU Doctors United. A handful of them spoke during the press briefing, alongside residents and fellows.
During her 19 years at UCSF, family medicine physician Erica Brode, MD, said she believed deeply in UCSF's mission and values. But she said she's recently seen her beloved healthcare system "veer away from those shared values and toward a greater focus on revenue generation ... in inadequate staffing ratios, and positions left vacant ... and in insurance negotiations that force patients to wait months for necessary lab work."
