AI Is Making a Mess of Nurses’ Schedules. They Say It’s a Safety Issue — SkimNews
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- HCA Healthcare has rolled out its Palantir-built AI scheduler Timpani to roughly 130 of its 190 hospitals since 2023, and nurses told WIRED it assigns too few staff, too few veterans, and routinely overrides requested days off — with HCA's own data showing Timpani schedules nurses on about 1% of their requested 'red days' off.
- National Nurses United, which represents about 10,000 of HCA's 100,000 nurses, says HCA has rejected its requests for information about Timpani, while a local union of roughly 500 nurses at an HCA psychiatric center has filed a grievance over the tool that is headed to arbitration.
- Angelique Russell, a former HCA data science manager, sued the company in July alleging she was fired in retaliation for raising concerns about Timpani, claiming HCA routinely deleted data needed to audit the tool in ways that may have violated healthcare laws (HCA has yet to formally respond in court).
- HCA executives counter that Timpani has cut manager scheduling hours, reduced reliance on costly contract nurses, lifted retention, and produces schedules where over 98% include a mix of skill and experience, while a spokesperson stressed that nursing leaders — not the software — make final scheduling decisions.
- Rayus Radiology also encountered errors after deploying a separate Palantir Foundry-based scheduling tool this year, with internal documents reviewed by WIRED showing it sometimes attached doctor orders to the wrong patient profiles, listed tests that didn't match orders, or invented personal details.
- Palantir's quarterly sales have nearly doubled to almost $2 billion as healthcare providers snap up its data tools, but the company has also faced pushback from civil rights activists over its defense and immigration work and from UK nurses and activists demanding the cancellation of a $440 million NHS contract.
- Lee Barker, an HCA nurse in Missouri, claims several colleagues quit over Timpani and that workplace injuries climbed in the first 12 months of use, while appeals are routed to a centralized Nashville team with no direct communication and only about a 50% shift-swap success rate.
Why it matters: HCA is the nation's largest hospital chain, and its decision to dismiss union information requests while a former manager's whistleblower lawsuit alleges deleted audit data means roughly 130 facilities are running a high-stakes AI scheduler with minimal external scrutiny — and nurses say patient care teams are already paying for it with exhaustion, turnover, and unsafe skill mixes.
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