NPR got their hands on Ascension’s official response filed with the court, and it’s brutal.
With this frantic, last-minute lawsuit, ThedaCare attempts to convert its own poor management into a disruptive personal emergency for everyone—anyone—but itself: Ascension, this Court, and (worst of all) seven essential health care workers who, until Friday, believed they were starting new jobs on Monday morning. The evidence already emerging confirms that ThedaCare’s “emergency” is entirely of its own making. This is true in the ordinary sense of that phrase: Ascension has not “poached” any employees; they left ThedaCare unprompted, and ThedaCare has only itself to blame for failing to maintain a competitive working environment for its medical staff, opting instead to underpay its essential workers and even refusing to make a matching offer to these employees when given ample opportunity to do so. Moreover, ThedaCare has known of this departure for weeks: the employees announced their employment offe rs from Ascension on December 21 and their resignations on December 29, and ThedaCare rejected multiple alternatives for retaining or replacing them—some of which ar e still available to ThedaCare today—opting instead to waste its money and everyone’s time on this frivolous lawsuit. But this emergency is also of ThedaCare’s making in a second, much more troubling sense: ThedaCare has invented the emergency ostensibly justifying th is lawsuit. As the facts will show, allowing seven health care workers to leave ThedaCare for the hosp ital of their choosing— Ascension’s St. Elizabeth Hospital, not even seven miles away—will not plunge the Fox Valley into a critical care crisis, as ThedaCare claims. St. Elizabeth already offers the medical services at issue, just without the fancy designation ThedaCare appears to view as a better use of funds than paying its workers. And Green Bay is and will remain available as a backup option—no need for diversion to Milwaukee or Madison. In short, this emergency is entirely of ThedaCare’s making because ThedaCare is making it up.
ThedaCare alone is responsible for its reputation and the potential loss of its Level II trauma verification and its Comprehensive Stroke Center certification. There is no basis—legal, factual, or otherwise—for ThedaCare’s apparent belief that other health care facilities havea duty to monitor ThedaCare’s accreditation status and avoid hiring decisions that could jeopardize that status, then be subjected to lawsuits if ThedaCare’s employees wish to leave anyway. Ultimately, while ThedaCare touts its significant investment in developing its trauma care program, it failed to invest in it s most important asset: its own employees. Even as it made more money as a result of its certifications, ThedaCare failed to adequately compensate its caregivers. Had it done so, perhaps it would not have lost th em to another facility. Having lost them now, ThedaCare can pull resources from other locations, or from outside agencies, just like any other healthcare system. It could hire traveling staff through an outsid e agency. ThedaC are is simply refusing to spend what it costs, continuing the pattern that led it here in the first place. Instead, it has spent its time and resources planning its legal strategy and filing this lawsuit. From start to finish, the alleged harm—if any—was caused by ThedaCare’s own actions and inaction.
