The Affordable Care Act has brought about financial uncertainty for many health systems, which makes it all the more important for those negotiating contracts with unions to move those negotiations out of the hands of the human resources department and into teams created for the purpose.
Brian Sweeney, RN, vice president for clinical and support services, and Joseph Anton, RN, vice president of emergency medicine, both at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, shared with an audience on Tuesday at the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s ANI 2013 in Orlando, Fla., how their health system approached collective bargaining and saved the system $18 million.
[See also: Hospitals pay a price for nursing strikes]
With less than a year to go before the collective bargaining agreement with one of the unions representing employees at the hospital expired, Thomas Jefferson’s administration knew it wanted to save money in the next negotiation and knew more planning was needed than usual to accomplish this goal.
It created two multidisciplinary teams – one focusing on contract negotiations and the other on strike preparation, said Sweeney. The teams set seven core objectives to build the framework for negotiations and hammered out what the hospital wanted in the new contract then built formal plans and execution strategies.
Those strategies included:
- tailoring and adhering to the agreed upon message
- putting a security plan in place to ensure the safety of staff, patients and visitors
- educating the union negotiating team on the ACA and its impact
- putting aside finances to cover expenses related to negotiation
- preparing for a strike by lining up outside labor and security resources; creating clear, written procedures detailing who does what when; and designating and training spokespeople to interact with the media, vendors and others
After nine months of negotiating, Thomas Jefferson and the union ratified an agreement that met many of the goals the hospital had set for itself before negotiations began, Sweeney said.
The six-year agreement saved the hospital more than $18 million over the life of the contract with the effort costing $540,000.