The Illinois State Medical Society wants to see more progress from the American Medical Association’s doctors’ union before launching its own cure for physician labor woes.
Next month, the state group’s leadership will recommend to its governing House of Delegates that they hold off on formation of a collective bargaining unit until they see positive results from the coming bargaining effort of the AMA’s union.
The Illinois medical society actually preceded the AMA’s historic vote last June to form a union when the state group passed a resolution earlier last spring designed to pursue creating a collective bargaining unit for Illinois doctors.
But the state society has since lagged behind the AMA’s Physicians for Responsible Negotiation, which has hired staff and has money allocated toward organizing doctors on a national grassroots level.
“We want to watch and see how the AMA’s collective bargaining unit goes first,” said Dr. Clair Callan, a Lake Forest anesthesiologist and president of the Illinois State Medical Society. “This is going to be a great pilot plan to watch to see how successful they are.”
Unlike traditional labor unions like the Service Employees International Union or the Teamsters, the AMA and the state medical society lack experience at organizing.
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So far, the AMA’s union, Physicians for Responsible Negotiation (PRN), won over its first group of doctors but hasn’t yet been victorious at the bargaining table with management.
This month, physicians who work for the Detroit-based Medicaid health maintenance organization, Wellness Plan, voted 27-8 to be the first doctors represented by PRN, which the AMA created last summer to organize doctors.
Like the AMA, the Illinois medical society sees a labor organization as a way to gain clout in dealing with managed-care companies, which the doctors say take decisions out of the hands of medical professionals and put them in the hands of insurance company administrators.
St. Francis suitors: Since the parent company selling St. Francis Hospital and Health Center in Blue Island prefers keeping the facility under Catholic ownership, several likely suitors from the faith are preparing bids.
SSM Health Care of St. Louis, which owns St. Francis, earlier this month announced plans to sell the 254-bed facility to focus on other areas of the country where the firm has more hospitals and can be a more dominant provider of medical care.
SSM wouldn’t disclose potential bidders, but said the phones are busy with investment bankers looking to hook the profitable facility up with a local buyer.
Among those looking into making an offer is Frankfort, Ill.-based Provena Health, which already owns five suburban hospitals and two more Downstate. Provena wouldn’t comment.
Meanwhile, Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care Centers in south suburban Evergreen Park isn’t closed to a possible affiliation, but currently has no plans for a bid, a spokeswoman said. If Little Company of Mary expresses interest in St. Francis, it would be a rekindling of merger talks the two south suburban hospitals had in the early 1990s.
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E-mail Bruce Japsen at [email protected]