Week One Takeaways

Date: October 9, 2024

Over the past week, we added more than 50 additional people and received great feedback about areas to focus on. 

Last week, we answered questions from the Portland Business Journal about who we are and why we started this group. The PBJ published an article in follow up to our interview and shared a link to our website. Note: a paid subscription to the PBJ is required to access this article. We cannot share the full article. 

Before we share more, we do want to touch on the origins of our name. The Unrepresented includes employees who are both unionized and not. Unrepresented is about representation, or critically lack thereof, in terms of respect and consideration from those with power. 

Our concern about the pending acquisition has never been about unions. It is about respecting the people needed to realize the value of the combination and fulfill its vision. What happened with unions was a leading example of how OHSU operates. The problem with their approach is that they did not consult Legacy. 

OHSU had agreed to equitable protections for all employees, and this is no longer true. The combined entity will create the largest employer in the Portland metro area. If employees cannot trust OHSU to uphold their written agreement, how can community members trust their commitments made to all Oregonians in the HCMO filing? 

OHA released a statement on Friday that they accepted the HCMO filing just 8 days after it was submitted. Over the next week, we will review the Full OHSU Health Care Market Oversight program notice and relate those to the criteria for which the transaction will be evaluated by the HCMO Program. We’ll pay attention to key statements, assumptions, and what data is available to support the filing. Let us know if you have concerns or ideas that may help our understanding. 

We’ve also heard your questions related to potential conflict of interest and oversight concerns of the transaction. We know the Legacy Health Board and OHSU Board are the decision makers at the respective organizations, but we have also heard concerns about how a state agency oversees another state agency through the HCMO process. 

We commit to anonymity for everyone involved and welcome your feedback and questions through the anonymous comment form on the site.