The physicians at an Escondido, Calif.-based health system are rejecting the decision by its executives to contract with a new medical group with a "no-confidence" vote, the latest in a string of challenges at hospitals across the U.S. in the past year.
The physicians at Palomar Health objected June 22 to the hospital's newly signed, three-year contract with emergency care providers Emergent Medical Associates and Benchmark to replace Vituity, a medical group the hospital had contracted with to provide emergency services for more than 40 years. In the past decade, Vituity had also supplied hospitalists, intensivists and support personnel.
Palomar announced the new contract June 21 and physicians took a "no-confidence" vote the next day, citing the lack of transparency in the process.
A few weeks earlier, the members of the medical staff at El Dorado-based Medical Center of South Arkansas held a no-confidence vote in the hospital's leadership, confirmed to the local newspaper, the News-Times, June 5. The physicians cited policies that affected care quality and staff morale as the reason for their vote.
Physicians were also among the groups behind the collapse of a mega-merger between Southfield, Mich.-based Beaumont Health and Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Aurora Health System in 2020. The partnership, announced June 17, sparked Beaumont physician leaders to circulate a no-confidence petition in the system's CEO, John Fox, and David Wood Jr., MD, Beaumont's executive vice president and chief medical officer.
Fifteen hundred physicians completed the survey, and 76 percent said they did not have confidence in corporate leadership. A similar survey of nurses reflected lost confidence in executive leadership as well. After board members, donors and lawmakers decried the merger, citing the physicians' quality of care complaints, it was called off Oct. 2.