Residents at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt share their CIR experience
Health Care Wins for Our Patients and Ourselves at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt
In the five years since residents at St. Luke's-Roosevelt formed a union, they have won a 20.5% total salary increase. Dr. Melissa Rockefeller, a PGY 2 in Emergency Medicine said, "We also successfully fought attempts by the hospital administration to increase premiums and cut benefits to the residents' CIR-negotiated free health care for both individual and family plans."
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Emergency Medicine chief resident, Dr. Chilembwe Mason, described how they were able to accomplish this. "We signed a petition and brought it to the administration to fight against the health care givebacks. A number of residents walked into the Vice President's office, and placed it on his desk. There were so many signatures there. The administration responded by eventually dropping the demand."
Dr. Rockefeller said that the new contract was a big win because, "We also get our Step 3 fees reimbursed now. Also, when our housing suddenly increased the rent on us, CIR stepped in and negotiated a two part increase with appropriate warning so the burden wasn't so great."
Dr. Rockefeller added that not all the benefits of being in a union were financial, stating, "Many departments have been able to get patient care problems fixed, and when the state of New York wanted to slash billion of dollars of health care funding, the union was involved in making sure that didn't happen.
One of my favorite things is the Patient Care Fund, which is a resident-run fund that we negotiated into our first contract. We get $100,000 a year from the hospital to spend on patient care needs and equipment that residents identify. We've plugged a lot of holes where our department couldn't get things because they weren't in the budget, and gotten training equipment that we wouldn't have otherwise. For instance, we offer a subscription for Uptodate.com for every resident.
We also have nitrous for use in the pediatric ED - benefits of the Patient Care Fund and CIR. As you can imagine, this comes in very handy!"
"The program directors have eventually realized that the union can help their residents in way that they can't and that it's not going to mess around with educational stuff or get involved in the informal ways of addressing things that already exist, "Dr. Rockefeller said.
"I know that many program directors are very supportive and often let our CIR staff person come to conference to talk to us. Many also use the benefits of the union to help recruit."