Terminating the Hospital-Physician Employment Relationship: Navigating Conflicts Arising from the Physician’s Dual Roles as Employee and Medical Staff Member

Authors

Gayland Hethcoat

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In an effort to meet the challenges of the post-health reform marketplace, hospitals have accelerated the practice of employing physicians. Despite this trend, many hospitals require their employed physicians to also maintain membership and privileges on the medical staff—the self-governing entity comprised of fellow physicians that oversees the practice of medicine within the hospital setting. Recent case law identifies at least two salient issues that will likely arise from physicians’ dual roles as hospital employee and medical staff member and be a point of negotiation and litigation: (1) the applicability of “due process” rights, which are typically afforded in medical staff peer review actions, to employment termination actions, and (2) the obligation to report employment termination actions to the federal government’s National Practitioner Data Bank, a central database for information about medical staff peer review actions and other incidents that may reflect on physicians’ competence and quality of care. This article examines how and why these issues may become points of contention and proposes various practical solutions to avoiding or mitigating such conflicts.

Recommended Citation

Gayland Hethcoat, Terminating the Hospital-Physician Employment Relationship: Navigating Conflicts Arising from the Physician’s Dual Roles as Employee and Medical Staff Member, 23 U. MIA Bus. L. Rev. 425 (2015)
Available at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umblr/vol23/iss3/6