A Tale Of Two Hospitals

S

ShadowArxxy

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Comrade
Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Fox Valley, which lay upon the River between the Lake of Winnebagos and the Great Green Bay. . .

. . . there stood two great hospitals: Neenah of the kingdom of ThedaCare, and St. Elizabeth of the kingdom of Ascension. And the Hospital of Neenah-ThedaCare had a radiology team in which nurses and technicians toiled for long hours with crappy pay, for they were Not Noble Doctors. And behold, one day one of these lowly servants saw that the other hospital had listed job openings, and did boldly apply, and was offered greater pay and lesser hours, and fewer kickings by the Noble Doctors of that place. And he did spread this good news to his friends, and they too applied for jobs at the other place. For they were all at-will employees, and had sworn no oath to ThedaCare.

And the Hospital Administrators of ThedaCare were greatly wroth, and made no counter-offer to the lowly servant. But instead they did call upon their Dread Lawyers, and marched forth to Court, and cried to the Judge that their great and mighty hospital could not withstand the siege of COVID without its many servants, and that the hospital of Ascension was of lower rank, and that therefore the Court should force its servants to remain in their accustomed place for a time, times, and half a time. And lo, did the Judge declare that whilst he pondered the matter, neither hospital might have the servants -- for he would not force them to suffer the cruel beatings of ThedaCare, but neither would he permit them to take up their new jobs at Ascension.

And thus all were miserable, except the Dread Lawyers who rejoiced in the misery of others.
 
There really isn't, I'm not sure how the judge thinks this will hold up given just how many lines it crosses...
 
Well, ThedaCare's basis for wanting the preliminary injunction is they're claiming irreparable harm not just to themselves but to the entire community , partly because with these staff losses, their ability to maintain the required 24-7 staffing for both their trauma center and stroke center ratings is potentially impacted. That's at least somewhat legit, and IANAL so I'm not sure how it interacts with at-will.

Shaky at best, though.
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Well, ThedaCare's basis for wanting the preliminary injunction is they're claiming irreparable harm not just to themselves but to the entire community , partly because with these staff losses, their ability to maintain the required 24-7 staffing for both their trauma center and stroke center ratings is potentially impacted. That's at least somewhat legit, and IANAL so I'm not sure how it interacts with at-will.

Shaky at best, though.
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It needs some amount of likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm to the movant, and a balance of harms with the public and those who would be affected. I'm not sure if it's a balancing or needing all 3.

The thing is, the hospital has a very good case on 2 and 3, but not on 1. I hope someone PACERs the order.
 
Sobek said:
This unironically sounds like 2 lords bickering over serfs and asking the King to mediate who gets it.
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To the US government and the people who own/run hospitals (in the States, it's a business after all), that's what you all basically are in their eyes: Serfs if you work there, cattle to be exploited if you're a patient.

Frankly, the entire US healthcare system is a fucking mess that borders on being outright inhumane (you charge for fucking ambulance rides, for god's sake!), and every time I see an American talk about "why don't people like the US healthcare system? It's fast and efficient etc" on places like Quora, I watch with relish as they're ripped into by people from every other country in the world.
 
US Healthcare is the best in terms of keeping you alive and treatments... If you can pay.

Sadly years of meddling by both insurance and government have created a hellscape of conflicting numbers and protocols, ballooning costs to the point of parody and made it all into the worst of both worlds where you can have the price of private with the wait and quality of public.
 
If you can't fix yourself up with a needle and some thread, then it's better to take a .45 to the head and spare your loved ones the debt.
-some guy from the United Shit called America
 
The Whispering Monk said:
That doesn't matter though. The community and the hospital does not OWN the employees of that hospital. They are pretending they do.
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Unfortunately, there is at least *some* precedent for this BS due to the way Reagan decided to screw over air traffic controllers for *daring* to strike against grossly unsafe working conditions back in 1981. They're deemed critical workers and it's illegal for them to strike, quit without permission, refuse to work *all* hours assigned (including unlimited mandatory overtime), even when they're outright not paid for months. All in the name of "essential to the well-being of the community".

Edit: Just to clarify, what Reagan did was legal because ATCs are federal government employees. It's incredibly borderline at best in this case, but the precedent Reagan set provides a toehold for this line of argument which otherwise would have pretty much no legal traction at all.
 
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Also, a point of detail that I realized isn't obvious to people outside of healthcare workers:

As a Level II Trauma Center, Neenah is required to have full coverage in critical specialties including radiology, whereas as a Level III Trauma Center, St. Elizabeth is not. Of course, this is the hospital's responsibility and not that of an individual employee, and Neenah is clearly acting in bad faith considering they already had three months advanced notice for some of these employees, yet not only made no counteroffer but are now crying to the court that they need 90 days to find new employees.
 
The courts have a lot of official leeway with temporary injunctions, and unofficial leeway runs further than it should for ones that are so short term that they'd pass before an appeal can be processed anyway. In this case, it's only until Monday -- which is the very next business day, and basically means the court just wants nobody to move until it can examine the merits better.
 
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