Nurses say HCA's Palantir-built Timpani wrecks schedules

HCA has rolled out Timpani at roughly 130 of its 190 locations since 2023, after co-developing it with Palantir. When the tool launched, HCA's top innovation executive, Michael Schlosser, told WIRED it would save time and money as well as eliminate favoritism in assigning shifts. He later wrote that Timpani has drastically reduced the hours managers spend scheduling each month, lowered reliance on costly contract nurses, and increased retention.

Nurses describe a different reality. Before Timpani, managers handled scheduling manually and generally consulted nurses well in advance when overriding requests, a Texas nurse told WIRED. Now, nurses report, they must flag problematic shifts to a centralized team at HCA headquarters in Nashville, which reviews appeals without direct communication or room for explanation. Nurses are also not the only health care workers raising concerns about Palantir's push into their industry; Rayus Radiology began receiving complaints about scheduling errors earlier this year after introducing a tool also built on Palantir Foundry.

At HCA, the dispute has reached the union level. National Nurses United, which represents about 10,000 of HCA's 100,000 nurses, says the company has rejected its requests for information about the technology. A union of about 500 nurses at a Missouri psychiatric center filed a grievance over the software, and the matter is likely headed to arbitration. Whether HCA's promised updates address the nurses' concerns, or whether the grievance forces changes, is likely to shape how far similar tools spread through hospital scheduling.