Tacoma hospital’s latest issue: ‘Anesthesia doctors have been leaving for several months’

Staffing and recruiting challenges for a local anesthesia group have come to a head this week at a local hospital.

St. Joseph Medical Center, part of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health system, is severing ties with an anesthesia group that serves the hospital, a union spokesman representing hospital workers told The News Tribune on Wednesday.

“Anesthesia doctors have been leaving for several months. It has impacted patients and the health care workers at St Joe’s,” Tom Geiger, media representative for UFCW 3000, said in an emailed statement in response to questions.

Geiger said that on Wednesday, St. Joseph president Jennifer Schomburg “announced that the hospital has terminated their contract with the anesthesia group.”

On Wednesday, two workers connected to the health system told The News Tribune the contract termination was for Pacific Anesthesia. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

As for what’s next regarding surgeries at St. Joseph, “There are a lot of unknowns right now,” Geiger wrote. “We will continue to work to support our members, patients and the community to provide quality, accessible and timely care.”

Kim Moore is interim chief medical officer for VMFH. Moore told The News Tribune in an emailed statement, ”As with many health care systems in the nation, we have spent considerable time evaluating the best way to stabilize our workforce, including anesthesia services, at St. Joseph Medical Center amid market shifts. As an integrated system, we’ve been able to avoid delays in surgeries by leveraging resources from our other hospitals and bringing on temporary anesthesiologists.”

Moore added, “We remain committed to providing high-quality care to our patients and communities.”

VMFH did not directly address the contract in its statements. When asked directly, a media team representative for the health system responded via email, “That’s all the information we can share right now.”

The system also didn’t offer any details in response to questions about scheduling and potential impacts to other hospitals.

Current and former health care workers connected to the hospital and the anesthesia group told The News Tribune in a series of separate interviews over the past few weeks that it has been difficult to recruit anesthesiologists for some time.

“From a recruiting standpoint, it’s important to know that it was hard to recruit even from people who are training in Seattle,” one worker said. “Tacoma is a difficult market to recruit into. People who train (in Seattle) want to stay up there.”

Earlier this month, Moore told The News Tribune in response to questions, “If needed, we will draw upon our system’s resources to support surgical care for our patients.”

Moore added at that time, “We are working to address this as quickly as possible.”

Pacific Anesthesia’s office in Bellevue did not respond to The News Tribune’s requests for comment regarding the contract and recruiting efforts.

A Tacoma listing for the group showed “permanently closed” in a Google search.

Labor shortage across the country

St. Joseph isn’t alone in its anesthesia labor crunch. A March 13 report in Clear Health Costs, a website that focuses on medical costs, offered a report titled, “The anesthesiology profession seems to be in crisis.”

The report documented labor pressures among anesthesiologists across the country.

In one example from the report, an anesthesiologist “from a small private group that works servicing one hospital in an urban location in Washington state” told a reporter, “We are trying to decide if this group is viable.

“The hospital is going to offer more money, but is it enough money to start hiring and retaining in a meaningful manner?” the worker asked.

In January, the American Society of Anesthesiologists noted a projected nationwide labor shortfall and shared a report in support of additional residency positions.

“There is a projected shortage of anesthesia care professionals in the next three to five years, and a third of the physician anesthesiologist workforce is older than 60,” said Lauren Nahouraii, M.D., lead author of the study and an anesthesiology and perioperative medicine resident physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“Adding extra anesthesiology residency positions can help address the issue, and our research suggests it also may be cost effective for the institution.”

Meanwhile, participants in an online student doctor medical forum operated by the nonprofit Health Professional Student Association indicated that St. Joseph’s problems might go beyond the hospital.

In a thread started in December titled “Mass exodus at St Joe’s Tacoma,” the first post asked, “Anyone know why?”

“Apparently Pacific Anesthesia is still having trouble hiring more than the rate that people are leaving (literally just got a text from a buddy at Pacific saying so),” one responded. “The situation is still not better yet.”

Some on the forum cited a higher cost of living in the region compared with other U.S. regions. Some also noted Tacoma not holding as much appeal as Seattle or Bellevue or Portland for those seeking jobs in the area.

The workers who spoke with The News Tribune cited changing labor market conditions, including younger job candidates tending to not seek as many hours as their predecessors had. Add to that, more of those presently employed started seeking greater life-balance shifts and retired or left the profession for other work, or became temporary workers, making more money with an array of places to work nationwide.

Another factor cited was the payer mix of local patients, with a higher Medicare/Medicaid population for St. Joseph compared with areas with more employer-insurance networks representing patients in higher-income areas.

Hospital officials have repeatedly referenced stagnant levels of reimbursements as a continuing issue through the COVID-19 pandemic, with financial strains intensifying as federal COVID relief ran out and labor and supply costs rose.

At a March 21 news conference organized by the Washington State Hospital Association, hospital executives warned that services statewide could be affected without substantive change.

In April, VMFH announced staff cuts amid its own losses, saying that the reductions were happening “through primarily non-patient-facing roles.”

After that report, a commenter on The News Tribune website wrote, “There’s MUCH more going on at St. Joe’s…. It’s not just ‘non patient facing roles’. It’s very much patient facing roles, too.”

Kelly Campbell, vice president of marketing and communications for VMFH, said in an emailed statement at the time of the announced cuts, “Like many health care providers in the Pacific Northwest, we are experiencing tremendous financial strain caused by a number of factors, including lasting impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and labor shortages.“

On Wednesday, VMFH added that it had “transitioned the compensation model for our Franciscan Medical Group physicians and APPs, (advanced practice providers) but it does not represent a salary decrease.”

While Pacific Anesthesia operates independently of VMFH, financial and labor strains have affected it too, according to workers connected to it now and in the past.

One worker described that as a result of pandemic disruptions, some surgeons turned to surgical centers outside of the hospital, in some cases permanently, for cases such as those involving spinal or joint operations.

“Surgeries are how hospitals pay for a lot of their other services. Surgeries are their moneymaker,” the worker noted.

Another worker noted that even two years ago Pacific Anesthesia staffing for the Tacoma area was around 30 FTEs. By this year, fewer than 20 remained. Some of those remaining already had plans to leave even before the contract action this week, which after those departures, would leave 12.