HCA Nurses Protest Palantir-Powered AI Scheduling Tool

HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital chain in the United States, has rolled out an artificial intelligence scheduling tool called Timpani to approximately 130 of its 190 locations. Co-developed with Palantir and built on its Foundry platform, Timpani uses algorithmic forecasts of patient volumes to automatically generate nursing schedules. While HCA executives claim the software reduces scheduling hours and ensures that over 98 percent of schedules contain a balanced mix of skills, frontline nurses report that the tool routinely ignores their scheduling preferences, leading to severe exhaustion and understaffed shifts.

Nurses represented by National Nurses United, which covers about 10,000 of HCA's 100,000 nurses, allege that Timpani frequently schedules too few workers or leaves shifts without enough experienced veterans. For instance, Florida critical care nurse Amber Retzloff reported that over a four-month period, the software failed to honor her preferences for more than half of the 50 specific 12-hour shifts she requested. Furthermore, HCA states that Timpani schedules nurses on requested days off, known as red days, only 1 percent of the time, but staff note that such assignments were previously unheard of. When errors occur, nurses must appeal to a centralized team in Nashville, with shift-swap success rates hovering around 50 percent.

The friction has led to formal grievances, including one from a union of about 500 psychiatric center nurses that may head to arbitration. Additionally, a former HCA data science manager, Angelique Russell, filed a lawsuit claiming she was fired after raising concerns that HCA routinely deleted Timpani's underlying data, preventing audits. The issues are not isolated to HCA; Rayus Radiology recently faced similar scheduling errors after implementing a tool built on Palantir Foundry.

For healthcare practitioners, the situation highlights the risks of replacing human clinical judgment with automated systems. While Palantir's sales have nearly doubled recently to almost $2 billion per quarter, and the company secured a $440 million contract with the UK's National Health Service, its healthcare push faces growing resistance. Practitioners find that without local managerial overrides, algorithmic scheduling tools can degrade working conditions, increase workplace injuries, and ultimately compromise patient care.