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A group of 40 hospital-based clinicians who work at Skagit Valley Hospital and Cascade Valley Hospital in Washington state have filed to unionize.

The doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, who work under a contract with Sound Physicians, are seeking to join the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD) with the aim of negotiating workplace issues, such as patient volumes, wages, and benefits, the union said in an announcement.

"There have been increasing patient volumes -- along with patient medical complexity -- but not enough physicians to appropriately tackle high patient volumes," Michelle Pham, MD, who is among the physicians who have filed to unionize, told MedPage Today.

This "brings into question the delivery of safe, quality patient care," Pham said, adding that "unionizing gives me hope that we as physicians have come together to have a voice and advocate for our patients."

The reasons behind the group's efforts to unionize are not unique, Pham noted.

"Unfortunately, with the state of healthcare today, for healthcare systems to increase profits, the quality of patient care often decreases," UAPD President Stuart Bussey, MD, JD, said in a statement. "This focus on the bottom line has created a situation where clinicians are forced to choose between meeting unrealistic patient quotas or providing the level of care patients expect and require."

The sentiment has been echoed by many physicians and other healthcare professionals across the country as a wave of unionization efforts continue.

Pham said that she and her colleagues drew inspiration from the efforts of other physicians in nearby Bellingham, Washington who recently charted a similar path. In May, MedPage Today reported that some 30 clinicians -- including 25 physicians and five nurse practitioners -- working at two PeaceHealth facilities under a contract with Sound Physicians had filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize, also with the UAPD.

MedPage Today also recently reported that more than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD. That union last month.

For the most recent group of hospitalists, the Washington State Public Employment Relations Commission is expected to rule on the hospitalists' filing to unionize in the coming weeks, according to the UAPD.

A spokesperson for Skagit Regional Health, which Skagit Valley Hospital and Cascade Valley Hospital are a part of, noted in an email that the hospitalists who have filed to unionize are not employees of the health system, but rather employees of Sound Physicians.

Sound Physicians did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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