UPMC is a Pittsburgh juggernaut. Its expanded Mercy Hospital and corporate headquarters loom physically above the city when you enter from Parkway West. Some 4.5 million people, including many in Greater Pittsburgh, access healthcare through UPMC insurance, and the system employed around 100,000 people in 2023.
As the nonprofit has ensconced itself in southwestern Pennsylvania, however, employees and patients say it has begun to act less like a charitable healthcare organization and more like a for-profit corporate titan.
For starters, its executives — including one who retired in 2021 — are taking home millions of dollars in pay and flying in a private jet as UPMC expands its global footprint. These same executives then brought on infamous consultant McKinsey & Co. ahead of laying off over 1,000 workers and slashing pay for travel nurses, framing these cuts as necessary to UPMC’s survival. Patients tell Pittsburgh City Paper they’ve seen a concurrent increase in fees and drop in the quality of customer service and patient care. UPMC institutions also rank near the bottom of American hospitals in terms of community investments per the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan thinktank that has published extensively on health systems’ expenditures.