Voicemail puts Boston hospitals' aggressive recruiting efforts in spotlight

When a senior vice president for Boston-based Caritas Christi Health Care discovered that a competitor was wooing three of his doctors earlier this year, he reacted viscerally. "You have fired the first shot," Timothy J. Crowley, MD, said in a voicemail to James Blakeley, the recruiter at Mount Auburn Hospital. "And trust me, you don't want to go to war with me. I'll take everything you got and everything you love and kill it." Crowley told the Boston Globe that the voicemail, while "unfortunate," was intended as a "light-hearted" joke between two longtime friends. But an executive at Mount Auburn complained to Caritas, and that led to Crowley's departure from the hospital chain May 29.