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Doctors at four of the city's public hospitals no longer have a date set for a potential strike after calling off two tentative walk-outs this month.
Their union, Doctors Council SEIU, said Friday that negotiations over a new contract are progressing after the parties agreed to work with a mediator earlier this week.
But the possibility of a work stoppage is still on the table if talks break down. And doctors at other public hospitals across the city, who are also in the midst of contract negotiations, have the option of voting to authorize similar strikes.
With that in mind, the City Council held a hearing Friday to grill the head of NYC Health and Hospitals on his doctors' grievances around pay and working conditions -- and what will happen to patients if doctors do walk off the job.
"If there was going to be a strike, we would obviously cancel elective surgeries, we would cancel outpatient visits," Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health and Hospitals, said at the hearing.
He added that some patients in intensive care at the affected facilities might need to be moved to other hospitals. But he said some supervising doctors who are not unionized would remain on the job, along with resident physicians, nurses and physician assistants. He said those clinicians would be able to staff the affected hospitals' emergency rooms.
More than 1,000 doctors initially threatened to strike earlier this month at Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica, Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, North Central Bronx Hospital and Coney Island's South Brooklyn Health. But the doctors withdrew their strike notice this week and did not submit a new notice for Jan. 21 as planned.
Katz emphasized he is optimistic about avoiding a strike.
"All the people involved on all sides I think have the same goal, which is a happy physician workforce," Katz said of the ongoing contract talks. "I remain hopeful that with mediation, we will be able to resolve this."
Still, Katz acknowledged that doctors have some legitimate grievances, including lower pay than their private hospital counterparts, and unequal pay and benefits across hospitals within the public system.
Katz added that part of what has made negotiations so complicated is that most of the doctors who work in the public system -- including those threatening to strike -- are employed by private affiliates, even though their wages are paid by the city.
The average doctor's salary at NYC Health and Hospitals is $269,000, according to Katz. But he added "there's a broad range" and the pay for some highly specialized surgeons bumps up the average.
Doctors threatening to strike have also complained about understaffing and a recent city directive to cut the amount of time allotted for new patient visits in half in order to accommodate more patients.
But Katz argued the number of patients the city's public doctors are supposed to see in a given shift is in line with national norms.
"We didn't do this for money," Katz said of the new policy. "We didn't do this to make people's lives harder. We did this because there were 20,000 people waiting for new primary care appointments."
Katz said a student loan repayment program has helped NYC Health and Hospitals recruit behavioral health physicians and could be a promising way to keep other doctors in the public system. But he added that the city has to figure out how much it can ask people to commit to in exchange for assistance with their loans.
"We don't have indentured servitude," he said.
In a statement on Friday, Dr. Frances Quee, the president of the Doctors Council SEIU, said the union was "pleased with the progress that we've made up to this point with the help of our mediator, and we believe we have made strides toward reaching an agreement."
She added that "our work is far from done," and said the parties have agreed to return to the bargaining table on Sunday.