Registered nurses held coordinated protests in eight US cities on August 27, asking hospitals and elected officials to end contracts with Palantir. Over a hundred nurses blocked traffic outside the company's former Palo Alto headquarters, KQED reported. National Nurses United says HCA Healthcare uses Palantir tools for centralized staffing and scheduling, while Mount Sinai uses the company's software to assess which patients qualify for care at home. Craig Cedotal, a pediatric nurse who previously worked at an HCA hospital, said automated recommendations often fail to match the needs of a shift. HCA did not answer KQED's request for comment.

A staffing system reaches the ward through a timetable. Its calculation determines how many nurses arrive, which experience is available and how quickly a call for help can be answered. When the recommendation is opaque, management can present a budget decision as a neutral output, while nurses absorb the result through more patients and less time at each bedside. The union also tied hospital procurement to Palantir's work for immigration enforcement and the Israeli military, widening the dispute from workplace control to institutional ethics. A hospital buying automated staffing should therefore disclose the data, assumptions, override rules and audit trail behind every roster. The contract should allow a charge nurse to reject a machine-built plan before the first patient is left waiting.