More than 100 pediatricians who work for Packard Children’s Health Alliance, part of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, have filed to unionize with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD).
The physicians, who practice at 27 clinic locations throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay region, according to UAPD, filed their petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Monday.
Their move to unionize follows years of concern among the group that “corporate pressures on healthcare are steering administrative decisions further away from the patients and families they serve,” UAPD said in a statement.
The physicians’ hope is to form a collaborative partnership with leadership to “shape policies that put children and families first, preserve the integrity of the patient-provider relationship, and uphold the standard of high quality care that every child in the region deserves,” the union added.
“I’ve wanted to be a pediatrician since I was 6 years old,” one physician leading the organizing effort said in the statement. “Now, as an early career physician, the delivery and structure of medical care is very different even from what I knew it to be while pursuing that goal.”
The physician noted that they see unionizing as a key step in ensuring physicians remain part of the conversation about how changes in care affect patients, relationships with families, and quality of services. “It’s important that medicine not be reduced to just another product to market and sell, but that it remains a collaboration between a care team and the families they serve,” they said. “We need to have a voice to advocate for this.”
“Healthcare is undergoing significant changes in how care is structured and delivered,” Stuart Bussey, MD, JD, president of UAPD, said in the statement. “Physicians must have a seat at the table as those changes unfold.”
“These pediatricians are unionizing to ensure that clinical decision-making reflects the voices of those who know their patients best,” he added. “The families who bring their children to the doctor deserve to know that their physicians are active partners in shaping that care.”
Indeed, physicians have increasingly demonstrated that they want a seat at the table amid a wave of unionization efforts in recent years. The sentiment coincides with more physicians now being employed rather than running their own practice, as MedPage Today previously reported.
Organization efforts at many different institutions across the county have helped spur others.
For instance, the number of union petitions with physicians in bargaining units increased in 2023-2024 compared with 2000-2022, researchers reported in JAMA, citing data from the National Labor Relations Board. Reports documenting motivations for 26 of the 33 petitions in 2023-2024 primarily pointed to working conditions (85%), lack of voice in management (81%), and patient care concerns (54%).
Filings to unionize were concentrated in western states, with 43 of 77 included in the study in California, Oregon, and Washington. Meanwhile, petitions were filed “against a diversity of employers,” the group reported.
Stanford Medicine Children’s Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MedPage Today.
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Publish date : 2026-04-07 21:10:00
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