08/14/2025
“At what cost are we continuing to put our patients — my mom, your mom, anybody’s mom or dad, brother, sister, family member — at risk?” said Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Care Professionals, a union that represents much of the health care staff at Ascension St. Francis Hospital, on the south side of Milwaukee.”
Smith, a medical technician who has worked at St. Francis for 24 years, said she has open questions about how changes to physician staffing will affect her own ability to provide care.
That includes how many patients nurses will be responsible for, or how to transfer complex cases out of the ICU or refer patients for surgery or other procedures if doctor levels have lessened. She said that could increase wait times for patients.
And Smith said she’s worried that the use of remote doctors will set nurses up to take the fall if something goes wrong within an intensive care setting.
“Our nurses are licensed professionals, but yet they’re not licensed to be scapegoats for a cheaper version of physician care,” she said.
“By no means am I saying that these physicians are not professionals or that their care is not good,” she added. “But … they should be at the bedside just as much as a nurse should be at the bedside.”
Outsourcing doctors reflects a post-pandemic crisis in health care staffing, but private equity is associated with higher costs to patients.
