UPMC: City of Pittsburgh Cannot Identify a Single Person Employed by UPMC

By Molly Gamble for Becker’s Hospital Review

Pittsburgh-based UPMC has maintained its claim it has zero employees and said the city of Pittsburgh “has not, and cannot, identify a single person who is employed by or on the payroll of UPMC, the parent holding company,” according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report.

Instead, in a filing on Monday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, attorneys representing the health system said people are employed by and get their W-2 tax forms from UPMC’s total 44 subsidiaries, some of which are outside of Pittsburgh.

They have again asked the courts to dismiss the city’s challenge to UPMC’s tax-exempt charity status, arguing UPMC is a parent holding company without employees — a problem since the city is demanding UPMC pay from payroll taxes. If UPMC’s claim is upheld, the city would have to challenge the system on a subsidiary-by-subsidiary basis.

UPMC first claimed it had no employees last month. In response, attorneys for the city said the healthcare giant purports to have tens of thousands of employees on its website, in its annual report and in some tax filings. An attorney representing Pittsburgh declined to comment in the report.

Common Pleas Senior Judge R. Stanton Wettick must now decide whether UPMC has employees or if its subsidiaries are the employers, according to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review report.