D.C. leaders say severe staffing shortages at Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health are tied to ongoing negotiations between the University and Universal Health Services over the debt-ridden Medical Faculty Associates.
Less than a year after the city opened Cedar Hill hospital — a $434 million facility in Ward 8 staffed by MFA physicians and operated by UHS, which also runs GW Hospital — D.C. and union leaders say the hospital has yet to fulfill its promise of delivering high-quality care to a historically underserved Black community. Residents of Wards 7 and 8 have reported persistent long wait times, diverted care and subpar patient experiences since the hospital began operating in April, which leaders link to ongoing uncertainty surrounding negotiations between GW, UHS and the MFA, the entities responsible for staffing the hospital.
Those concerns come amid reports that Cedar Hill is short nearly 500 employees, a staffing gap that city leaders say undermines the facility’s mission to deliver critical healthcare, including trauma care and obstetrics, to a predominantly Black community that has long faced poorer health outcomes and limited access to local care.
“I don’t know how they’re able to serve the public at all when you don’t have adequate staff. No one has been able to answer that,” said LaJoy Johnson-Law, a Ward 8 resident who waited nine hours for an ambulance to transfer her and her daughter from Cedar Hill to another hospital for care.
Johnson-Law brought her daughter to Cedar Hill’s emergency room for severe stomach pain, but staff said they were unable to provide care and recommended transferring her to Children’s National Hospital — which also staffs Cedar Hill’s pediatric emergency department with physicians, pediatricians and nurses. She said she and her daughter waited from 2 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. for an ambulance to arrive, adding that nurses did not provide treatment or medication during the wait.
Johnson-Law, who also serves as the D.C. State Board of Education’s Ward 8 representative, said Cedar Hill’s shortcomings stem from chronic staffing shortages, which prevent the hospital from providing timely and adequate care.
Cedar Hill’s career page currently lists 55 openings, including 30 nursing and 11 technician positions.
Her experience echos concerns city leaders began raising about staffing at the hospital across the Anacostia River ahead of its April opening. In March, they warned that the MFA’s financial instability could undermine hiring at the new facility, as the enterprise was renegotiating its original staffing contract with UHS. At the time, the practice had closed the prior fiscal year with $107 million in losses and carried more than $272 million in debt to GW and other entities.
Since then, the MFA’s debt has risen to $444 million, including an additional $100 million in losses in fiscal year 2025. GW is negotiating with UHS to cut its financial support for the medical enterprise, reaching a preliminary co-funding agreement in October and continuing to work toward a finalized deal.
D.C. leaders tracking the hospital’s impact on the community have fielded concerns from residents and union leaders, who say low staffing levels and the delayed expansion of ambulatory services are eroding trust in the facility’s ability to meet community needs.
Those leaders are closely watching the GW-UHS negotiations, viewing their success as key to resolving Cedar Hill’s staffing shortages.
Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage, the only D.C. official currently on the hospital’s board as city leaders work to fill two other vacancies, told the D.C. Council’s Committee on Health last week that ongoing GW-UHS negotiations slowed workforce buildout on the hospital’s outpatient side to the point where UHS did not begin staffing the promised service lines under the original operational agreement until December.
UHS’s staffing shortages have hindered the MFA’s ability to deploy its physicians to Cedar Hill, because the medical enterprise does not want to send its staff without sufficient nurses to support them, he said.
“That is clearly an area where they have made promises in the operational agreement about the specific services they will provide on the outpatient side, and we can hold them accountable to that,” Turnage said.
Leyla Adali, a spokesperson for 1199 Service Employees International Union, which has members in Wards 7 and 8, said chronic understaffing at Cedar Hill has made it difficult for nurses and doctors to deliver high-quality care, putting both staff and patients at risk. Those concerns led Lisa Brown, executive vice president of 1199 SEIU in Maryland and D.C., to call on the D.C. Council last week to hold hearings investigating the hospital’s operations.
“This is nothing short of shameful, and 1199SEIU is calling on the D.C. Council to hold a hearing investigating Cedar Hill’s operations,” Brown said in a release. “Hospital administrators must answer for their shortcomings for their patients and for the taxpayers of D.C., who footed a $434 million bill to get the facility up and running.”
At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson, chair of the Committee on Health, said she believes UHS is treating the Cedar Hill and MFA agreements as interconnected, with staffing shortages and delays in opening ambulatory services tied to ongoing negotiations rather than a lack of available personnel at the MFA. She said the shortages have left Ward 7 and 8 residents waiting hours for care and called rebuilding trust with the community an “uphill battle.”
“We didn’t build a $400 million hospital for no one to go to because they don’t believe that they’re going to get good care,” Henderson said.
Henderson echoed Turnage’s understanding that the MFA would not send doctors if Cedar Hill lacked sufficient nurses and technicians to support them, a staffing issue she said “bled over” into the ambulatory side.
“A hospital cannot survive on an emergency room alone, which is what Cedar Hill has been trying to do for the last year,” Henderson said.
A UHS spokesperson acknowledged the staffing shortages but said the company remains committed to providing the D.C. community with “high-quality” health care. They added that UHS believes the pending MFA agreement will bring “stability” and a “strengthened alignment” that will support an expansion of services at Cedar Hill.
An MFA spokesperson said the medical enterprise is continuing to work collaboratively with UHS to meet the physician and advanced practice practitioner needs of Cedar Hill’s hospital and ambulatory care center. They said the MFA is current on its staffing commitments for the ambulatory care center.
The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the MFA has fulfilled its overall Cedar Hill staffing obligations, how many physicians it has deployed and if ongoing negotiations between UHS and the MFA have impacted the hospital’s operations.
GW declined to comment on whether its negotiations with UHS have impacted the MFA’s Cedar Hill staffing obligations and role the University intends to play in future Cedar Hill staffing and operations.
Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White said staffing shortages at Cedar Hill have forced the hospital to divert patients to GW Hospital, undercutting the city’s goal of providing care on the other side of the river.
“This is supposed to be a community-based hospital, with GW running the hospital, but they are funneling people uptown,” White said. “A lot of people out here have economic issues, so going uptown is a financial barrier for them. That’s why we wanted to build east of the Anacostia River.”
White said the city has lost money as Cedar Hill plays “catch up” to implement proper systems and address staffing shortages, a situation he said some community members attribute to a premature opening. He said the hospital is making progress negotiating contracts with doctors, but the MFA remains a “big issue” in efforts to resolve staffing gaps.
D.C. officials ahead of Cedar Hill’s opening said the city would cover the hospital’s losses up to $25 million in the first 10 years of operation.
“The MFA has not been a good partner with Cedar Hill,” White said. “They had been significantly behind in getting staffed up. They’ve also not hired the specialty doctors that we were promised in the community.”
