Portside

More than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD.

"If successful, this will be the first physician union in Delaware and the first union of any kind at ChristianaCare," Doctors Council SEIU said in an announcement of the filing, which pointed to the ongoing corporatization of medicine as driving the physicians' efforts.

Some of the specific concerns that physicians detailed in regard to their filing included understaffing and inadequate resources, corporate influence on medical decision making, limited input in matters affecting patient care and physician safety and autonomy, and moral injury caused by pressure to place profit over patients.

Roshan Modi, MD, a radiologist at ChristianaCare, told MedPage Today that he believes "the theme has really been profits before patients across all departments. We're just being asked to do more and more with less and less."

"Physician morale is at an all-time low because we want to care for our neighbors, we want to care for our community, but we're not given the opportunity or the adequate resources to do so appropriately," Modi said.

That sentiment is hardly an isolated one amid a nationwide movement that continues to grow.

Just this week, some 150 primary care providers from Oregon-based Legacy Health announced that they are planning to unionize with the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, a hospitalist-specific labor union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.

Earlier this month, a group of about 150 physicians and advanced practice providers at Washington, D.C.'s Unity Health Care, who unionized with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists last December, gathered to announce the filing of unfair labor practice charges against Unity with the National Labor Relations Board.

Other recent efforts have included a strike by emergency medicine physicians contracted through the private equity-backed staffing firm TeamHealth to work at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit following their unionization last year.

Overall, physicians at ChristianaCare and other facilities are part of a growing comradeship aimed at improving patient care and working conditions through a resurgence in organizing efforts.

"We're hoping that we can be a blueprint for other hospitals," Modi said. "This is not unique with ChristianaCare. We all are experiencing the same things, and as a result, patients are experiencing the same things."

"This is a movement that needs to happen in medicine to push back against the corporatization of healthcare," he noted.

A spokesperson for ChristianaCare said in an emailed statement that, "we are proud of our physicians, who deliver world-class care while serving our patients and our community with love and excellence."

"We believe that continuing to have a direct relationship with physicians is an essential component of our continued shared success," the spokesperson added. "We have received the petition from Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD and recognize the right of all employees to vote on whether or not they want a union to represent them."

Jennifer Henderson joined MedPage Today as an enterprise and investigative writer in Jan. 2021. She has covered the healthcare industry in NYC, life sciences and the business of law, among other areas.

MedPage Today covers clinical news…

MedPage Today is a trusted source for clinical news coverage across the medical specialties. We cover all the clinical news, findings, and announcements that we think will directly affect the lives and practices of health care professionals throughout the U.S. Our reporters are longtime experts in their beats; our editors are top-notch, and we are meticulous about fact-checking and disclosures. Learn more about our editorial guidelines.

…and we report on conferences….

MedPage Today’s writers attend roughly 75 medical conferences a year in the U.S. and abroad to bring you the most relevant coverage across all the major specialties. We often send multiple writers to each conference, and also work with a portfolio of highly experienced freelance journalists to ensure that our coverage is comprehensive and representative.

…as well as what’s happening in Washington…

Our readers occasionally write in with remarks such as “MedPage should stay out of politics.” We wanted to take a moment to explain why we cover politics—why we have a Washington office with reporters who are fully credentialed to cover Congress, the Supreme Court, HHS, and the White House, and consider our coverage of “medical politics” to be central to MedPage Today’s mission and identity.

Peggy Peck, MedPage Today’s founding editor, wrote an editorial in 2016 that describes our reasoning:

“Ever since the passage of Medicare – followed by Medicaid – it has been impossible to separate medicine from politics, because decisions made by the overseers at those programs (first called the Health Care Financing Administration, now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) affect medical practice every day, in every setting.

We don't serve our users well if we ignore that simple fact, but we can serve them well by bringing the informed voice of MedPage Today to that coverage. It is our job to cover all aspects of an issue, all sides of the question, even if doing so may sometimes make us or our users uncomfortable.”

...with impartiality and journalistic integrity...

MedPage today relies on advertising revenue provided by its sister company, Everyday Health Media, LLC (EHM), but maintains full editorial independence. This means that none of the editorial personnel at MedPage Today have a say in any EHM advertising content, and EHM advertisers have no influence on article topic selections, what articles are written, how they are written, or what they say. Ads are always labeled as advertisements. Learn about our advertising policy.

...We also publish Perspectives/Opinions...

An important part of our mission is to report on what people in healthcare are thinking, saying, and doing, for the benefit of others who want to know. Does that sometimes reflect one point or another on the political spectrum? Yes.

Does every article we publish need to express viewpoints from every part of the spectrum? No.

For readers who would prefer NOT to know what others in healthcare are thinking, saying, and doing, and simply want MedPage Today’s indispensable clinical news delivered to their inbox daily, you can head over to the enewsletter subscription page  to customize your newsletters so that you receive only clinical news.

We publish what is submitted by readers; what we and the editorial board deem factual (in cases where facts are presented), and as adding to the ongoing, constructive conversation about the state of healthcare in the United States.

If you have a perspective you think is missing from the site, and that perspective advances a productive conversation about how to improve healthcare, then we’d love to hear it regardless of what political ideology it might align with. Please send to perspectives@medpagetoday.com. We investigate and report on all aspects of healthcare…

At the heart of it, MedPage Today’s mission is to do our part to make healthcare better, by helping to create better-informed, more aware healthcare professionals. As part of this mission, we have an in-house Enterprise & Investigative team, led by Kristina Fiore.

The E&I team reports on everything from the medical specialty boards, to Stella Immanuel’s unorthodox prescribing practices during the COVID pandemic, to the ongoing problems with Medicare Advantage.

Kristina’s team has received numerous awards and fellowships since its inception; the work resulting from these prestigious fellowships includes covering rare diseases for the NPF Rare Diseases Fellowship; covering addiction and pregnancy, but also COVID and foster care in the U.S., for two separate USC Annenberg CHF fellowships.

…produce a podcast called MedPod Today…

MedPage Today’s monthly podcast MedPod Today, with host Amy Ho, MD, is a forum in which health professionals share stories from their daily practice: often personal, always interesting. In this podcast we honor and highlight the humanity and soul of caring for people -- patients and one another. We also publish audio wrap-ups of the weeks news, and interviews with our Editor in Chief, Jeremy Faust, MD.

…and publish opinions and perspectives from our readers and our Editorial Board.

MedPage also publishes an increasing number of contributed pieces, whether written or in video form, from our readership, but also from our diverse and respected Editorial Board. Of course, the views and opinions of these contributions are not those of the editors, writers, or management of MedPage Today. View our submission guidelines for editorials.

Thank you for reading MedPage!