Doctors in HMO Vote to Unionize

Doctors with the Wellness Plan, a 140,000-member HMO in Detroit, voted to organize under the American Medical Assn.’s bargaining arm, making them the first physicians to join the union. Physicians for Responsible Negotiation was formed last year by the AMA in response to what it described as increasing workload and financial pressures being placed on doctors by HMOs and other managed-care companies. Dr. Abhay Mehendale, a Detroit pediatrician who has been with the Wellness Plan for 15 years, said he hopes unionizing will ease his frustration over working without a contract for more than a year. Federal antitrust laws ban most of the nation’s 650,000 doctors from joining a union because they are self-employed. Only doctors who are employed by a hospital or municipality, for example, may unionize. About 110,000 doctors are in that category.