Nurses at HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital chain in the United States, say an AI scheduling tool the company built with Palantir is producing unbalanced and exhausting assignments, and they contend the problems can leave care teams short-staffed. The tool, called Timpani, has been rolled out at roughly 130 of HCA's 190 locations since 2023, according to nurses who spoke with WIRED. Amber Retzloff, a critical care nurse in Florida, says that over four months she requested 50 specific 12-hour shifts and that more than half the time the software assigned her different ones, often placing her on consecutive days.
Retzloff, 34, a National Nurses United labor union leader with a decade of bedside experience, says the tool honors her preferences far less reliably than managers did when they scheduled by hand. Five nurses at other HCA locations reported similar experiences, and other purported HCA workers have raised complaints on Reddit. The nurses allege Timpani routinely schedules too few nurses, or too few experienced veterans, particularly on Sundays, and frequently ignores requests to space out shifts or take specific days off.
HCA spokesperson Harlow Sumerford says nursing leaders, not Timpani, make final scheduling decisions. He says claims that the tool is designed to reduce staffing at the expense of patient care are misrepresentative, and that HCA's goal is to have caregivers with the right skills and experience available while considering colleagues' scheduling preferences. HCA says Timpani schedules nurses on just 1 percent of their requested days off, known as red days, though nurse Lee Barker in Missouri says such assignments were previously unheard of at their facility.
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. In July, a former HCA data science manager, Angelique Russell, sued the company, alleging she was fired in retaliation for raising concerns about Timpani and accusing HCA of routinely deleting data the tool uses to build schedules, which she said prevented auditing and may have violated healthcare laws. HCA has yet to formally respond in court, and Russell declined to comment.
Timpani runs on Palantir Foundry, a platform for storing and analyzing company data, and uses algorithmic forecasts of patient volume and staffing needs to build nursing schedules automatically. Michael Schlosser, HCA's top innovation executive, said in July that the tool has sharply cut the hours managers spend scheduling each month, reduced reliance on contract nurses and increased retention. A Palantir spokesperson declined to comment using their name; the company describes its software as presenting information more helpfully and says customers are responsible for data, policies and decisionmaking.
Complaints have also reached Rayus Radiology, a large US imaging chain, which began receiving reports of scheduling errors earlier this year after adopting a tool also built on Palantir Foundry, according to internal documents. Schedulers there suspect non-standard forms, illegible handwriting and insufficient human review contributed to cases in which requests were linked to the wrong patient profiles, listed tests that did not match orders, or invented personal details. Rayus spokesperson Kit Crancer says broad characterizations do not fairly reflect its safeguards or commitment to safe, accurate and timely care, adding that Rayus uses technology to support, not replace, human judgment.
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