Why a group of Allina Health Mercy Hospital doctors wants to unionize

[UPBEAT MUSIC] CATHY WURZER: In other news, physicians at Allina Health Mercy Hospital are unionizing. They filed a petition for representation through Doctors Council SEIU which already represents other healthcare workers at Allina Mercy, Unity, and other hospitals throughout the state. Melissa Touroutoutoudis is a doctor of critical care at Allina Mercy Hospital. She's on the line. Welcome doctor.

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Hi, thanks so much for having me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: This may come as a surprise to folks that physicians would unionize. I know only a small percentage of doctors are members of a union. What prompted this move?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: As doctors, our goal is really to just do the very best we can for our patients every day. And we really see ourselves as patient advocates. It's felt harder and harder especially over the last few years with the COVID crisis to really feel like we're active in making some of those decisions, and that we have a voice in which to advocate with.

When you look at other professionals, pilots and NBA players, all professionals have unions. And that gives them the voice that they need to advocate for themselves and that's what we're hoping for here.

CATHY WURZER: There have been moves to unionize resident physicians and interns at other hospitals. Are you moving in that direction or is this established staff or are these established staff physicians and residents and interns? Who's unionizing, specifically?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Yeah. It's the staff physicians that are two campuses.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Let's talk a little bit about, I thought there were a federal antitrust laws that prohibit doctors from unionizing and from bargaining collectively about reimbursement issues. Am I right or wrong about that?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: We're employed by a corporation, we're not physicians who have their own practice. We don't set any of the reimbursement. We have nothing to do with reimbursement, basically.

CATHY WURZER: We reached out to Allina Health and they declined an interview but they sent us a statement saying, at Allina, we deeply respect and value our physicians, their contributions to our organization, we respect their rights as employees to support or oppose a union. And they say we are committed to maintaining our culture of collaboration and communication.

We are concerned that a union environment will create conflict complication and unnecessary complexity, what do you make of that statement?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: I think that many of us have felt as if having an actual open and collaborative conversation with administration is difficult, especially at a hospital like ours where we're not the primary Allina Hospital, a lot of administration isn't housed at our hospital. I don't know that that feels really genuine to a lot of the physicians.

What we're really hoping for is to be able to participate in those conversations and I think that just how different corporate medicine has become over the last 5, 10, 15 years has made that tough for employees.

CATHY WURZER: What specific working conditions would you like to change in a union?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Yeah. It's a lot of different specialists across our bargaining unit who would all be looking for individually different things that relate to their specialty. I think the biggest thing that we're hoping for is a collective unit, is that we can all be there for each other and have an actual collective push.

Honestly I love my job. My job doesn't work if everybody else in the hospital is unhappy if the--

CATHY WURZER: Doctor, so sorry about that. So sorry.

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: I think I was saying if all of the other specialists are struggling, we need pediatricians and ob-gyns and hospital medicine doctors and surgeons and everybody to have their conditions, their work conditions be acceptable to them and sustainable over an entire career. And I think that would be the benefit, for us is to use all of our voices to advocate for our hospital.

CATHY WURZER: Physicians, as you know, are bound by an oath that the patient is paramount. And if physicians are called upon to participate in say a collective action, a strike as a result of their union membership, could patients view that as physicians putting their interests above that of the patient? And might that potentially damage the patient-physician relationship?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: This is something that we've talked about and strike is just not something that we'd have to be pushed so hard to get to that point. It's really not what we'd have any interest in doing up front. We also feel pretty strongly that our job is to be there for our patients.

CATHY WURZER: So it sounds as though that then a union representation you feel would give doctors more of a seat at the table when it comes to dealing with management. And as you say as medicine has changed so much in the past 5, 10 years.

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Exactly.

CATHY WURZER: So curious, what happens next?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: So we have filed our intent to unionize cards with the National Labor Relations Board and then we set a time for elections that will be in collaboration with Allina.

CATHY WURZER: OK. And this is strictly at Mercy and Unity, is that right or have other Allina hospitals, other physicians at other Allina facilities contacted you?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: I know there's interest in the community widely in the Twin Cities and outside of the Twin Cities. I think that a lot of physicians see this as the way forward.

CATHY WURZER: Any idea as to when there might be a decision as to whether you move forward under the Doctors Council SEIU, say in the next few weeks, months?

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Yeah. I think our timeline that we're hoping for is along the orders of weeks to a month or two.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Doctor, I appreciate your time, thank you so very much.

MELISSA TOUROUTOUTOUDIS: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Dr Melissa Touroutoutoudis is a doctor of critical care at Allina Mercy Hospital.