In a significant victory for hospitals, a Fox Rothschild litigation team has succeeded in clarifying the law that governs when courts may intrude on the intra-hospital process associated with suspension or restriction of a physician’s privileges. Several courts had addressed related issues over the years, but there was a hole in the law concerning when and under what circumstances trial courts may intervene.
Fox attorney Jacob S. Perskie argued that a trial judge had improperly intervened in internal administrative proceedings underway at a hospital regarding the suspension of clinical privileges for a podiatrist.
Perskie argued that the court should allow the hospital’s internal process to play out before intervening, and more particularly, that the Court lacked the authority to alter the burden of proof in the hospital’s bylaws.
A three-judge panel of the New Jersey Appellate Division agreed, finding that the lower court erred by intervening in the disciplinary process before the hospital had completed its internal review and hearing process, thus disrupting the autonomy of the hospital’s governance, and that the lower court had erred in altering the burden of proof from that set out in the hospital’s bylaws.
Background
The case involves a podiatrist who had clinical privileges at medical centers within a major New Jersey health system.
Following a disagreement regarding scope of privileges and subsequent issues related to professionalism with his peers and physician leaders, medical staff leadership exercised their authority under the hospital’s bylaws to suspend or restrict the podiatrist’s clinical privileges.
A trial judge intervened before the hospital's internal hearing process concluded, ordering the use of a standard at the intra-hospital hearing applicable only to the termination of a practitioner’s medical staff privileges, and only where such termination arises solely from disharmony between the practitioner at issue and others.
But the Appellate Division disagreed, ruling that the hospital's bylaws should have been the controlling authority. The court emphasized that the trial court's premature intervention and imposition of a new standard were inappropriate. The appellate court reversed the lower court's decision, allowing the hospital to proceed under its own bylaws.
Fox attorney Sara Bernstein assisted Perskie with the appeal.
Original source can be found here.