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At a news conference in August announcing a filing to unionize medical providers of Peak Vista Community Health Centers’ 20 clinics under the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, Dr. Stuart Bussey and Dr. Michelle Myers were among the speakers.
The Vascular Surgery Clinic inside Penrose Hospital abruptly shut down on Sept. 6, leaving thousands of patients scrambling to find vascular services.
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At a news conference in August announcing a filing to unionize medical providers of Peak Vista Community Health Centers’ 20 clinics under the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, Dr. Stuart Bussey and Dr. Michelle Myers were among the speakers.
The Vascular Surgery Clinic inside Penrose Hospital abruptly shut down on Sept. 6, leaving thousands of patients scrambling to find vascular services.
Two large health care networks in Colorado Springs — CommonSpirit Health and Peak Vista Community Health Centers — continue to undergo strife, leaving angry patients and employees in the wake of in-house upheaval.
CommonSpirit Vascular Surgery Clinic
Six weeks after CommonSpirit Health suddenly shut down its Vascular Surgery Clinic inside Penrose Hospital, some patients are still struggling to replace their physicians.
Colorado Springs resident Catherine Boddington said she hasn’t found a new doctor yet. And she’s paid more than $2,000 out-of-pocket for charges for leg treatment bags she uses three times a day. Without a doctor’s office in the picture, her insurance stopped paying its share of the bills.
“It was wrong of them to do this; I don’t think it’s fair to the doctors or families or patients,” she said Friday.
Another Colorado Springs resident, Halvor Hagen, said one of the doctors at the Vascular Surgery Clinic operated on him and then never returned to care for him, since the clinic closed while he was recovering in the hospital. Complications led to an extended stay and no regular physician familiar with his case to check in on his condition.
“This was downright bad right from the start,” he said. “I went through a lot of hell, and nobody even called me.”
In upcoming weeks, new vascular services will open locally at a different location for patients of CommonSpirit — which in August 2023 took over management of 20 hospitals when it folded Centura Health into its organization, including Penrose and St. Francis hospitals in Colorado Springs.
Specifics are not available. CommonSpirit denied a Gazette request for an interview about the topic and instead issued this statement, “Penrose Hospital looks forward to welcoming additional vascular surgeons to our community in the very near future.”
Cardiac & Thoracic Surgery Associates, an independent practice that provides cardiac and thoracic surgery at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs and St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, reportedly is preparing to add vascular services.
A vascular interventional cardiologist at Colorado Springs Cardiology also has been working to help fill the void. And Dr. Marcus Kret of Colorado Cardiovascular Surgical Associates in metro Denver said his office has been receiving patients from the defunct clinic, where a phone recording says it’s permanently closed.
Additional reinforcements could come too late for some patients, such as retired Air Force Col. Richard Rauschkolb, who, after several weeks of searching, signed on with a doctor that’s associated with UCHealth, the other major hospital system in Colorado Springs.
Rauschkolb has scheduled the same surgery that a doctor at the Vascular Surgery Clinic was going to perform, but it’s weeks out since “all these other people from Penrose are looking for other doctors, just like me.”
CommonSpirit told The Gazette last month that the two doctors at the Vascular Clinic, Dr. William Chambers and Dr. William Fry, chose to leave. Neither doctor returned calls from The Gazette requesting an interview.
Some patients said they don’t believe CommonSpirit’s limited explanation. Boddington thinks the physicians were forced out.
“When I found out Dr. Chambers was leaving, I read between the lines and thought, ‘This can’t be right.’ It made no sense,” she said. “They were both fabulous doctors who would not have voluntarily given up their patients.”
But in recent months, she said she has experienced the clinic’s aptitude slipping, with phone calls not being returned and appointments being changed. “Almost as if I was being prevented from reaching my doctor,” she said.
“I’ve seen this elsewhere in Colorado Springs and Denver — usually some group moves in, fires everyone and restarts a clinic,” Boddington said. “My internist and urologist just disappeared, and I didn’t know what happened.”
Rauschkolb said he knew doctors at the Vascular Surgery Clinic were not happy with how the system was being run under CommonSpirit, a Chicago-based nonprofit.
So perhaps it’s accurate that they did leave the clinic, he said. “But they also left a lot of patients hanging.”
As medical providers at Peak Vista Community Health Centers await a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board on a complaint claiming 18 charges of labor law violations against their employer and a ruling from the same body to proceed with a vote to unionize, patient care continues to deteriorate, they say.
About a year ago, providers received a message from upper management to “stop providing steak and potatoes,” according to one Peak Vista doctor who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
“The analogy was in a five-star restaurant you expect steak and potatoes, and when you go to a soup kitchen you expect soup,” the doctor said. “I was disturbed by that because our mission is that all of our patients deserve steak and potatoes.”
Patient count has dropped from more than 30,000 monthly encounters in 2018 to below 23,200 per month last year, according to a letter issued last week by dozens of providers and sent to Peak Vista donors.
Declines in patient volume can jeopardize federal grants if the numbers fall below set thresholds for care, said Andrew Guttman, a representative with the organizing Union of American Physicians and Dentists, with headquarters in Sacramento, Calif.
The union also handed the letter to administrators at the organization’s “Breakfast of Champions” on Oct. 16, before being told to cease doing so or they would be removed. The annual event features well-known Olympians and raises money to fund the organization’s primary medical, dental and behavioral health services.
Employees claim that five tenured providers were fired in July and since then others have been subject to termination for insufficient reasons.
Other staff have quit over what they say are untenable working conditions that include requirements to see more patients than is practical and having to spend personal time on paperwork.
In January of 2018 the organization employed 81 physicians and advanced practice providers; in January 2023 there were 52, the letter states.
Peak Vista declined a Gazette request for an interview. In a written statement, President and CEO Emily Ptaszek said Peak Vista does not have a shortage of physicians.
“Our focus, as always, continues to be on our mission to provide exceptional health care to the patients and communities we serve,” she wrote. “Peak Vista is committed to ensuring it has the staffing and resources to support the needs of all our providers, meet the demands of our patients and communities, and continue providing quality care.”
The organization has hired a labor and employment lawyer to “guide us through this intricate process” of the move to unionize, she said, adding, “Peak Vista respects our providers’ rights under federal labor law.”
In a letter dated Sept. 10 to “non-leadership medical providers,” the organization’s top administrators outlined drawbacks to unionization, saying “Peak Vista does not believe a union is necessary. … Peak Vista believes its organizational expectations are in line with industry standards” and that productivity goals and patients schedules are based on financial needs and regulatory requirements.
Said union representative Guttman, “They deny any wrongdoing and whatever decisions are made including terminations or disciplinary actions were done for legitimate reasons, but they refuse to elaborate.”
The impact of the turmoil has been “deep,” said another physician who wished to remain anonymous. “We are overbooking patient visits every day to get standard well-checks in or something urgent.”
Peak Vista, the region’s largest health care network for low-income, uninsured and indigent residents, is a “safety net” provider, which means “a lot of these patients have no choice but to go to Peak Vista for their care,” said Hannah Pieciah, a family nurse practitioner who was terminated without cause in July.
“If they don’t have the bandwidth to take care of these patients, they’re left to go to the emergency room or not get taken care of at all,” she said. “The administration has made it seem like the providers are the problem; they need to take ownership for their part in this, in order for the organization to be able to move forward.”
Contact the writer: 719-476-1656.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect comments from CommonSpirit Health
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