MINNESOTA
DECEMBER 2018
PHYSICIAN
THE INDEPENDENT MEDICAL BUSINESS JOURNAL
Volume XXXII, No. 09
A practice built on principle Taking a stand BY JEANNE MROZEK, MD
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fter 35 years of service, 12,775 overnight shifts, and countless life-changing encounters with families and patients at our Children’s Hospital Minneapolis location, Minnesota Neonatal Physicians is moving into the North and West Metro. It would be lying to say this change isn’t difficult and emotional. The relationships we’ve built with medical staff and families of medically fragile newborns are deep and, we hope, lasting.
Physician unionization A path worth considering
A practice built on principle to page 164
BY MANDY RAE HARTZ, MA “Hospital administrators easily manipulated physicians, treating them as if they were hired hands. Insurance companies were dealing with them as if they were employees. Government programs … controlled key aspects of doctors’ work, told them how much they would be paid, and what procedures they would be paid for.” —Sanford A. Marcus, MD, founding physician of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (AFL-CIO)
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My first job out of fellowship training was in another state, as a hospital-employed neonatologist in a community hospital. Our family of five, including a six-month-old, picked up our roots to begin life in a new state, away from friends and family. I started the job with optimism and energy, ready to share my knowledge and skills, gleaned over 14 years of post-high school education, with the patients, families, and staff in my new home. I knew how to work hard, how to share childrearing responsibilities with my spouse, and most
r. Marcus’ reflection on why he spearheaded his physician’s union with the AFL-CIO in 1973 resonates today. As the health care industry has grown and consolidated into fewer large players, physicians face ever-increasing challenges to Physician unionization to page 104