Montana
St. James hospital in Butte losing surgeons, union raises concerns about workers, patients – Daily Montanan
St. James Healthcare in Butte appears to have lost more than half of its surgeons in the last year, and the Montana Nurses Association is urging Intermountain Health — which runs the hospital following a 2022 merger — to prioritize retention of critical health care providers.
Roughly one year ago, the hospital counted nine or 10 surgeons, and it has just four after Intermountain failed to retain three in contract negotiations and two others retired, according to the Montana Nurses Association.
“This is a really big impact” for surgical services, said Robin Haux, labor program director for the Montana Nurses Association.
St. James counts 67 beds in southwest Montana and is the only acute care facility in the region, according to information from Intermountain Health. A story about the merger from NBC Montana said it served nearly 40,000 members of the community in 2022; Intermountain did not provide an updated figure.
In an email Friday, Intermountain Health did not dispute the union’s count of the more than 50% decrease in surgeons in the last year. In response to a question about plans and a timeline for filling positions in Butte, Intermountain emailed a statement with remarks from an interim president.
“We are excited to welcome several new providers across various specialties to St. James and Intermountain Health in the coming months,” said Pam Palagi, interim president of St. James Hospital, in a statement from an Intermountain media relations manager. “Those specialties include neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, general surgery, endocrinology and walk-in care.”
Intermountain Health’s corporate offices are based in Utah. Its website says it works in seven states including Montana and at 33 hospitals and 385 clinics. It touts that it is “reimagining health care,” offers “pioneering research,” provides personal and affordable care, and is a partner with the Las Vegas Raiders.
The merger between Intermountain Health and SCL Health created the 11th largest nonprofit health care system in the U.S., according to NBC. At the time, the former president of St. James said patients would see a logo change as a result, but they could expect to see a high level of care continue.
“The great quality care that you are used to receiving will stay the same, and how you access and utilize our services will not change,” said then-President Jay Doyle in 2022 to NBC.
Friday, however, Haux and Montana Nurses Association labor representative Emily Peterson said patients already are seeing impacts from the departures of providers. The lost doctors who have not been replaced include a urologist and gastroenterologist.
Peterson said the hospital recently had to reschedule three weeks’ worth of procedures for patients after Intermountain lost one surgeon. She said it canceled two weeks of appointments after it lost another.
“That is one big concern for our nurses,” Peterson said. “They know these patients need help, and it was more upsetting to them that the patients that needed procedures weren’t getting them than it was for them to not get their hours.”
However, the union is seeing employees have hours cut or have to take eight to 12 hours of paid time off a week. And without needed providers and a full schedule, they worry about the potential for staff cuts in the future.
“It is causing a lot of concern with the nurses and the surgical techs,” Peterson said.
A petition launched Friday asks Intermountain, a nonprofit healthcare system that describes itself as the largest in the intermountain West, to address the crisis by prioritizing the retention of providers, strengthening their contracts, and keeping registered nurses and other staff in Butte.
The Montana Nurses Association has roughly 25 nurses in surgical services at St. James and 132 members at the hospital altogether. The Teamsters of the Montana AFL-CIO represent additional staff such as CNAs, or certified nursing assistants.
“This is really about protecting the ability to provide high quality care and really vital services and vital care to the community,” Haux said.
To fill one gap, a traveling doctor is slated to help temporarily, but at a high cost, Peterson said.
Dr. Nathaniel Readal, a urologist, said Friday he declined to sign a new contract with Intermountain because he believes some of the language in the agreement put him at risk legally.
Most surgical specialists are generally required to take seven to 10 days a month of being on call, but in Butte Readal said he took an average of 270 to 300 days a year. That means staying within 30 minutes of the hospital and being available to deal with an emergency; in other words, it means no skiing, fishing, beer or golf.
“I take more call because there’s nobody else to do it. We have a pretty large patient base,” Readal said.
But he said he interpreted some of the language in the contract to suggest he would have to be on call and available basically around the clock and every day for existing patients he had cared for in the past.
If such a patient came in with an acute issue and Readal was, say, skiing and unreachable, he said he could be at medical legal risk as the agreement was drafted. He didn’t quibble with compensation, he said, but he requested language in the contract that would protect him legally, and Intermountain did not provide it.
“That was the thing they were unwilling to change and why I would not sign the contract,” said Readal, who had signed previous contracts before the merger.
A story about Readal in the Montana Standard in 2018 said he completed his medical degree and residency at renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and was working to make healthcare better and more accessible at St. James. In a way, the story said he represented the “future of Butte.”
The story said he and his wife were already a part of the community. Friday, however, Readal, said he is evaluating all his options for the future, in part because standard healthcare contracts make it difficult to remain in a community and care for patients if a provider doesn’t want to work for the medical group that staffs the hospital, or Intermountain in this case.
In the email from Intermountain, Palagi said the industry comes with some churn.
“Transitions in hospital leadership and physicians are common in the healthcare industry,” Palagi said. “At St. James, we prioritize continuity of care and employ robust recruitment strategies to ensure smooth transitions and maintain high standards of patient care.
“ … The bottom line is that St. James Hospital and Intermountain Health remain committed to ensuring the residents of Butte and southwest Montana have access to top-notch, patient-centered care right here in their home community.”
The Montana Nurses Association said the administration at St. James wants to protect frontline employees such as nurses, CNAs, and other staff. Haux said they know how hard it is to replace those positions.
“But we also know they will not be able to continue this without providers and without a full schedule,” she said.
Haux said the petition does not force action by Intermountain. However, the Montana Nurses Association and Teamsters of the Montana AFL-CIO may pursue other options that would put pressure on the healthcare system if leaders do not respond.
“I don’t think … that will sit well with the Butte community if they choose not to respond,” Haux said. “That’s a very tight, close-knit community.”
Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) is facing yet another lawsuit over allegations of unlicensed sampling — only this time, it’s centered on a video clip of the rapper’s infamous 2013 fight with paparazzi.
In a case filed Wednesday (July 15) in Los Angeles federal court, the celebrity news agency Bauer-Griffin claims that Ye, French Montana (Karim Kharbouch) and others used audio from the headline-grabbing incident in “Where They At,” released in 2024 off French’s Mac & Cheese 5.
The May 2013 video, which also features a pregnant Kim Kardashian, shows West charging at a photographer outside a Los Angeles restaurant and shouting “don’t take no photos” and a string of profanities: “All of you m*therf*ckers stop it, man!”
The clip appears prominently in the intro to Montana’s song — a use that the lawsuit calls “blatant and willful” copyright infringement.
“Given Mr. Ye’s history of numerous confrontations with paparazzi, the video was highly newsworthy,” the agency’s lawyers write in legal documents obtained and first reported by Billboard. “Listeners immediately recognized the audio sample that begins the infringing record as being copied from the video.”
Ye has been sued over a dozen times for allegedly using unlicensed samples and interpolations in his music, including a high-profile battle with Donna Summer. In May, he lost a jury trial over using an uncleared sample in an early version of the Grammy-winning “Hurricane” from Donda. He had testified at trial that he’s “very generous” about giving credit and compensation when it’s due, but that “a lot of people try to take advantage of me.”
In Wednesday’s complaint, Bauer-Griffin says the creators of “Where They At” showed no such respect to its rights in the video of the paparazzi incident, using it despite being well aware that sound recordings must be licensed when any amount is directly sampled into a song.
“In the music industry, copyrights are prevalent and well understood,” lawyers for the agency write. “Every defendant knew that they needed to have but did not have permission to use the audio sample.”
Reps for both stars did not immediately return requests for comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants producers Dem Jointz (Dwayne Abernathy Jr.) and BoogzDaBeast (Jahmal Gwin), as well Gamma, the label that released the song, and its distribution unit Vydia.
The confrontation at issue in Wednesday’s lawsuit was one of two high-profile scuffles with paparazzi that year for the rapper, who was then still known as Kanye West. Two months later, he clashed with photographer Daniel Ramos outside of LAX, resulting in a civil assault lawsuit that the star eventually settled two years later on the eve of trial.
As many celebrities have learned over the years, simply appearing in a photo or video does not give someone any legal rights to it. Ownership of such material is always retained by the creator — an inconvenient fact that has sparked lawsuits against Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa.
It’s unclear who filmed the May 2013 incident, which happened outside a Beverly Hills restaurant minutes after the star had also been filmed accidentally banging his head into a signpost while trying to avoid other photographers. But the rights to the footage have been owned by Bauer-Griffin from the beginning: When TMZ first posted it at the time, it came with a watermark crediting the agency.
“The infringing record has been widely distributed on various streaming platforms, in flagrant violation of plaintiff’s exclusive rights under copyright laws,” Bauer-Griffin’s attorneys write. “Plaintiff brings these claims to vindicate those rights.”
Governor’s Office
HELENA, Mont. – Governor Greg Gianforte today announced Montana ranks in the top ten states with the highest year-over-year job growth rates.
“Montana continues to rank as one of the best states to start or grow a business, earn a competitive wage, and secure a good-paying job,” Gov. Gianforte said. “As we continue to reform our regulatory environment to support job creators and cut taxes to give money back to the hardworking Montanans who earned it, we see the results of conservative policies at work as the Treasure State ranks in the top ten states with the strongest job growth.”
According to a report by Stat Ranker, which compared all 50 states based on year-over-year growth in total nonfarm payroll employment between February 2025 and February 2026, Montana ranked ninth in the nation for both jobs added and overall job growth adding more than 2,100 jobs over the year, representing a 0.4 percent job growth rate.
Last week, the governor attended the groundbreaking for Janicki Industries in Great Falls to celebrate the aerospace manufacturers’ investment expected to create more than 2,000 jobs over the next ten years and the ribbon cutting for Amazon’s sixth delivery station in Montana that brings the company’s total employment in the state to over 800.
Last month, the governor announced Montana was ranked in the top five states with the fastest-growing economies since 2021. The report from Visual Capitalist found that between 2021 and 2025, Montana’s GDP grew 16.1 percent while the national average in the same time period was 10.8 percent. When it comes to wage growth, Montana ranks third in the nation for fastest wage growth and is only one of two states in the nation where wage growth has outpaced inflation since 2020. The average wage earned by Montana workers reached $60,037 in 2024.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gianforte also announced Montana’s fiscal health surged into the top ten states nationally under his leadership, rising from 22nd in 2021 to 8th in 2025. Since taking office, the governor has paid off the state’s general obligation debt, making Montana debt-free in 2023 and saving Montanans $40 million over a period of two years.
Montana also consistently ranks in the top fifteen states with the lowest unemployment rates. Last month, the governor announced Montana’s unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4 percent in May, lower than the national unemployment rate which remained at 4.3 percent.
The full Stat Ranker report can be read here.
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