The walls have ears, in this case they were mine

Nurses Activism

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My family doctor and his office manager were talking about something I had already read about over on healthleaders. It appears that his as well as many other practices were bought out by UPMC in about 1997. Somebody had this brainstorm back then that by owning these practices the health orginization could reap huge profits. (They probably paid some damn consultant a fortune for the idea and then spent a fortune implementing it). The implementation of this plan was wide spread throughout the country and UNTESTED. Well as it turns out it is not working out well. They never made the money they thought they would make and they are dumping these practices early before their contracts run out. However, they can't get out of these contracts without spending more money because they are binding for a certain number of years. From what I gleaned from this conversation the MDs that have the longest contracts are making a killing. Like I said I was ease dropping so keep that in mind. What burns my butt is the fact that 1997 was the year that UPMC(as well as many other institutions) were busy cutting staff, freezing wages and doubling nurses work loads. They still had money to make bad business deals though didn't they. By the way, the office staff of the MDs that are being dropped (apparently there are money making MD practices that are being kept) were called into a meeting and told you are out of a job, GOOD BY. Gee does that sound familiar or what? By the way I am not just pointing the finger at UPMC, this practice I just described was widely and wildly embrassed thoughout the industry in the late 90s. These same people who could not wait to blow large bucks on bad business deals would not listen to a word we nurses were saying when we tried to talk to them about the true cost of cuts they were making. They always said the cuts were necessary for monitary reasons.

Yeah, the hospitals here did the same thing at about the same time, I guess. They took a bath. I didn't know the office staff would be laid off when the practice got dumped. Is the doc going to go out of business??

So who exactly profited from this? Hmmmm?

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Dennie

that bit about people losing their jobs is the spot where their voices got low, I think they were saying something about some of these docs taking early retirement, I admit I am fuzzy about that segment of the conversation, easedropping is tricky:devil:

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