Lawsuit fights "existential threat" to medical staff independence
While "L.A. Law" and other TV courtroom dramas often focused on the rich and glamorous, a lawsuit originating in a rural dairy community in California's Central Valley has captured the attention of the state's legal and medical professionals and—given the state's outsized influence—the case's impact could be felt far and wide.
"Every once in a while, you get a really important case that's a flashpoint," said Long Do, California Medical Association (CMA) legal counsel and director of litigation. "This case serves as an existential threat to independent hospital medical staffs."
The suits stems from actions taken Jan. 26, 2016, when the Tulare Regional Medical Center (TRMC) board of directors voted to terminate the hospital's medical staff organization and effectively remove the hospital's elected medical staff officers, install a slate of appointed officers, and approve new medical staff bylaws and rules drafted without staff input.
Except for the newly appointed officers, the rest of the staff was then terminated, stripped of their rights as active members and then granted "provisional" status as part of the new medical staff which they had not applied or consented to membership with, according to a post-trial brief filed by the TRMC Medical Staff.
Read more at AMA Wire.
