LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic Universe-Document

LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic

October 17, 1999, Sunday, 31REGION 24 EDITION

SECTION: NATIONAL, Pg. A-3

LENGTH: 578 words

HEADLINE: AMA UNION OR RECRUITTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BYLINE: TAMMY WEBBER

DATELINE: CHICAGO -

BODY:

They won't carry picket signs or sing songs of solidarity. There will be no organizing rallies at union halls.

When the American Medical Association launches its new physicians' union later this year, it intends to make one point clear: This is a different kind of union. No strikes. No recruiting of doctors. But can doctors accomplish their goal - gaining more leverage against the managed care industry - through a union that doesn't act like a union?

Some involved in the debate are skeptical but acknowledge the AMA already has changed the landscape simply by getting involved.

"The AMA has helped us because they got a lot of attention. Everybody's now discussing this," said Gary Robinson, executive director of the 6,000-member Union of American Physicians and Dentists. "Maybe now the choice is between which organization will do a more effective job for us, rather than should we" unionize.

The AMA House of Delegates voted in June to form a union for doctors because of complaints that insurance companies are preventing doctors them from prescribing the best care, overloading them with paperwork and cutting their compensation.

That the nation's oldest doctors group is forming a union at all is a remarkable departure for the famously conservative AMA.

"Clearly, this is a statement that physicians want and feel that a message needs to be sent about just how frustrated they are - that individual voices no longer suffice," said Todd Vande Hey, AMA vice president of private sector advocacy.

Most of the nation's 650,000 doctors are ineligible to join a union because they are self-employed. Federal antitrust laws ban collective bargaining by the self-employed.

Only doctors who are employed - by a hospital or municipality, for example - may unionize. That accounts for about 110,000 doctors. More than 40,000 physicians currently belong to a labor organization, the AMA says.

Experts expect the number of employee doctors to increase as more hospitals buy doctors' practices, and as the high cost of setting up independent practices forces new doctors to become employees. In addition, the National Labor Relations Board is weighing whether residents are employees, not students. That would allow about 96,000 residents to unionize.

The insurance industry is most worried about efforts by the AMA to exempt doctors from antitrust law and allow the 500,000-plus independent doctors to bargain collectively. Insurers say that could send health-care costs soaring.

The AMA is lobbying the Federal Trade Commission, and a bill is pending in Congress to lift the restrictions.

AMA officials don't even use the word "union" when talking about their new organization.

"Traditional labor unions do not and have not promoted a professional image or an image that is consistent with principles that physicians feel must be paramount," Vande Hey said. "Strike provisions or withholding services is unacceptable to them."

The AMA union's name - Physicians for Responsible Negotiations - was chosen with great care. In the medical community, the initials PRN mean "as needed"; the AMA wants to convey the point that unionization is a last resort for doctors who cannot settle their grievances any other way.

PRN will not actively organize doctors but will supply the expertise physicians need to form bargaining groups and will, eventually, help them in negotiations. These doctors' groups will be considered PRN locals.

LOAD-DATE: December 10, 1999