Messrs. Frist,

When Hospital Corporation of America was founded in 1968, it aspired to deliver patient-focused care and improve the practice of medicine. In reality, HCA has generated billions in wealth for the Frist family while putting patients and workers at risk as your hospital empire has expanded across 21 states.

A year out, the data show you’ve used the pandemic to accelerate your profits instead of stepping up to support your frontline workers and care for your patients. Your personal wealth more than doubled to $15.6 billion in the pandemic and HCA racked up $3.75 billion in profits last year. Yet, frontline hospital workers at HCA were left to fend for themselves when it came to PPE. Thousands of workers across your network live at or below the poverty line because of the inadequate wages they are paid. 

HCA hospital workers have delivered lifesaving patient care throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Yet, many have been rewarded with poverty wages as low as $12.50/hour. CEO Sam Hazen is paid 1,038 times the pay of many of the essential HCA frontline caregivers who have risked their lives to serve in a global pandemic.

Right now, tens of thousands of HCA hospital workers are being paid less than $15 an hour.

HCA is the largest for-profit hospital corporation in America, and should be leading the industry on living wages for the healthcare heroes who have selflessly worked through exhaustion, understaffing, and inadequate PPE for more than a year. 

I urge you, as founders and the largest shareholders of HCA, to immediately move to establish an across-the-board $15/hour minimum wage for all HCA workers across America. HCA employees can not afford to continue to wait for a living wage.