Nurses Protest Palantir's AI Role in Hospital Staffing and Care Decisions
Nurses in eight U.S. cities rallied against hospitals using Palantir's AI tools, saying the software worsens staffing and raises privacy concerns.
What happened: On Aug. 27, members of National Nurses United rallied in eight cities, including Asheville, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., demanding hospitals stop using AI software from Palantir Technologies. In Palo Alto, more than 100 nurses blocked traffic outside the company's former headquarters. The union says HCA Healthcare, which runs about 190 hospitals, uses Palantir tools to build nurse schedules, while Mount Sinai Health System in New York uses Palantir products to help decide which patients qualify for at-home care.
Why it matters: Nurses say the scheduling software has produced short-staffed shifts and the wrong mix of experienced and junior nurses on a given unit, decisions they say used to be made locally by staff who know the floor. They're also uneasy that the same company supplies data tools to immigration and defense agencies. Protesters pointed to ELITE, a Palantir-built application reportedly used by federal agents to help identify people for arrest, partly using Medicaid data, and objected to Palantir's work supporting Israel's military.
How it works, plainly: Palantir sells data-integration software: hospitals feed in information such as staffing levels, patient records, and care needs, and its algorithms generate outputs like shift schedules or recommendations about who can safely be treated at home. The appeal is speed and consistency across large hospital systems. Nurses' complaint isn't just about errors; it's that the algorithm's priorities and trade-offs aren't visible to the staff who have to live with the results, and that they had no say in adopting it.
The rollout: Neither HCA nor Palantir responded to reporters' requests for comment. Palantir, now based near Miami, reported nearly $2 billion in net income in the first half of this year and told shareholders its business has nearly doubled over 12 months. National Nurses United, which represents over 225,000 members, is preparing to negotiate new contracts with HCA, Kaiser Permanente and other major employers, and says these protests are meant to put AI's role on the table before those talks begin.