AGENCY TESTIMONY
The complex physician employment structure at NYC Health + Hospitals
0:14:45
ยท
3 min
Dr. Katz explains the intricate employment structure for physicians at H+H, highlighting that the majority are not directly employed by the city but through various affiliate groups.
- Majority of doctors are employed by four different affiliate groups, with PAGNY being the largest
- PAGNY was created about 25 years ago when the city and some medical schools decided to end their direct partnerships
- The structure results in multiple different agreements within PAGNY itself, leading to complexities in employment terms
Mitch Katz
0:14:45
So in terms of of understanding the complications so that we're all, have a level, understanding, the majority of doctors who work at health and hospitals are not employed by the city.
0:14:58
There is a group that is employed by the city, but that is the minority.
0:15:03
The majority of our, physicians are employed by 4 different affiliate groups.
0:15:10
The largest affiliate group is PAGNY, the Physicians Affiliate Group of New York, which is a nonprofit that was created explicitly and solely for health and hospitals.
0:15:23
It occurred it was created at the time it was about 25 years ago when the city and some of the medical schools decided that they did not want to work together any longer, and so PAGNY was created.
0:15:38
And when PAGNY was created, all of the existing agreements that existed between physicians and, say, Columbia for Harlem, Jacobi, and Einstein, the New York Medical College and Metropolitan, Lincoln and Cornell, all of those agreements were then mirrored in PAGNY, which has had the complicated effect that PAGNY, which is just one of our affiliates, has multiple different agreements with each of the doctors' groups.
0:16:19
So part of what you hear in, chair, Dolores, you had mentioned, you know, the sick leave and the part of the issue is that each of the different groups have different numbers of sick days, different numbers of CME days, different numbers of vacation days, even different number of hours, which has caused quite a bit of both jealousy because people say, well, but over there, they get 3 days, and we only get 2 days, or we get 7 days 5 days.
0:16:50
And so, while I know it has not been easy for anyone, the goal has been to try to come up with a common work set of rules, which will make everything more efficient, for PAGNY, which has to maintain all of these separate agreements, and to try to make it fairer to everyone.
0:17:13
And I I recognize and, you know, I wanna be honest to everybody's face everyone is not experiencing that, and I understand that.
0:17:20
And I think that's important, and that's part of the goal of today's hearing is to allow an airing of that.
0:17:26
But that's the goal.
0:17:28
The goal was to try to have the different, hospitals have similar rules so that there was a sense of fairness and that it was easier, frankly, to administer.
0:17:42
We also, have academic affiliations, NYU, Mount Sinai, and SUNY Downstate.