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Peer Review & Medical Staff Privileges

A negative peer review determination by a hospital board or committee can trigger the inquiry and investigation into a medical license holder’s potential commission of professional misconduct. Therefore, it is imperative that a physician obtain representation through the peer review process when facing credentialing issues or the suspension or revocation of medical staff and hospital privileges. Furthermore, the evidence obtained by the peer review committee can be requested and subpoenaed by the State Board of Medical Examiners to further supplement and substantiate the Board’s investigation.

"You are entitled to be represented by legal counsel when facing credentialing disputes and the loss of medical staff privileges."

You are entitled to be represented by legal counsel when facing credentialing disputes and the loss of medical staff privileges. Properly assert your rights: plan a defense and allow for the possibility of successful mediation. Often this will circumvent the need for unnecessary appeals, loss of work and a potential disciplinary investigation.

Network & Insurance Terminations

A public disciplinary sanction or the suspension and probation of a physician’s license often trigger the termination and exclusion of the physician from provider networks. This is especially true with regards to standard of care violations and findings and determinations of chemical dependency. Although the exclusions can be appealed successfully, this is a complicated matter and is best handled by an attorney. Because the physician has been disciplined, it is unlikely the appeal committees will listen to the pleas of the physician with an open mind. Your rights are best asserted through competent and experienced legal counsel.

National Practitioner Data Bank Disputes

Appeals can be successfully launched to the National Practitioner Data Bank to remove inaccurate, expunged or sealed information pertaining to a medical professional’s disciplinary history or criminal record. This is often a tedious process and involves complicated questions of law and fact and is best handled by an attorney experienced in health, administrative and criminal law.

Partnership Formations, Modifications & Disputes

A well planned and structured Professional Association is vital to the ongoing success and streamlined efficiency necessary to ensure maximum profitability. Because physician partnerships are subject to change through internal disputes and buy and sell agreements they need to be drafted accordingly. If you are in the process of planning a Professional Association or change is in your midst contact us for legal assistance through this vital period. We can provide counsel to you in business matter including:

  • Incorporation
  • Start Up Procedures
  • Purchase and Sale agreements
  • Shareholder Agreements
  • Shareholder and Partner Disputes
  • Property and Medical Equipment Leases and Contracts
  • Employee/Employer Contracts

"It is not uncommon for litigation to develop over an issue that a well thought out and properly drafted contract would have alleviated."

Thorough, clear and determinative Employment Agreements are essential as they outline and protect the rights and remedies of both the employer and the employee. Moreover, clearly laid out and defined obligations can limit the frequently assumed expectations that employers and employees often have of each other. It is not uncommon for litigation to develop over an issue that a well thought out and properly drafted contract would have alleviated. If you or your Professional Association needs practice counsel to advise you in the area of employment contracts please call us. Some of the matters we handle are:
  • Contract Drafting
  • Contract Review
  • Employment & Employee Advice and Counsel
  • Contract Negotiations
  • Non-Compete Agreements
License Defense
Administrative Law
Criminal Law
Health & Corporate Law
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Top Stories

  • The Best Friends Animal Hospital is still seeking homes for about six small-breed dogs seized from a puppy mill in Prairie Grove last month. (Northwest Arkansas Times)
    2008-09-05 13:32:43 GMT
  • Legislators grilled a lawyer who receives more than $100,000 a year in fees from three state boards, accusing him Wednesday of being "unjustly punitive" to doctors and others.
    2008-09-05 12:48:29 GMT
  • Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's employees were off Thursday because of an electrical fire in the downtown Little Rock building where the offices are located.
    2008-09-05 12:48:29 GMT
  • Twelve tuberculosis patients have run away from the Jose Pearson TB Hospital in Port Elizabeth, up from the initial six thought to have absconded.
    2008-09-05 12:47:34 GMT
  • He sustained life-threatening injuries and was rushed to hospital and into surgery.
    2008-09-05 04:45:54 GMT
  • The Arkansas attorney general's office will reopen Friday after it was shut down this week because of an electrical fire.
    2008-09-05 02:43:04 GMT
  • LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles doctor who is the son of Bermuda's premier has been charged with sexually abusing four more patients.
    2008-09-04 23:37:14 GMT
  • THE head of Afghanistan's anti-drug court was shot on his way to work and died later in hospital, his office said.
    2008-09-04 19:28:14 GMT

  • SIR – Your article about the Competition Commission’s report on BAA did not recognise that airport hubs depend on transfer passengers and that these “network effects” cannot be split without huge economic cost (“A new departure for London’s airports”, August 23rd).

    For example, imagine two passengers on an aircraft flying from Edinburgh, one whose final destination is Denver and the other whose final destination is Bangalore. Both would fly to Heathrow and transfer to their respective long-haul flights. With good load factors, all three routes (Edinburgh, Denver and Bangalore) are sustainable. Imagine next that inadequate capacity at Heathrow forces one of the routes to be flown from Gatwick. The two Edinburgh passengers cannot then fly together. As a result, the Edinburgh to Heathrow flight is no longer viable and the Edinburgh passengers transfer instead through another European airport. ...

    2008-09-04 18:42:06 GMT

  • Computing: Image-processing software could help to identify artists by their characteristic brushstrokes—and spot forgeries

    THE ability of computers to analyse complex digital images is growing rapidly. Robots are being fitted with powerful vision systems that enable them to recognise and hold things. Computers can scan satellite images of the Earth for tiny features, or search pictures from deep space for strange objects. They can analyse medical images to find out what might be going on inside a human body. Now digital imaging is starting to figure out how to spot art forgeries, too.

    Science has long been used to help authenticate works of art. Technicians can date paint from its chemical composition, for example, or x-ray a canvas to reveal what lies below the surface. In recent years, however, the art itself has come under more scientific scrutiny, especially through the analysis of brushstrokes. The idea is to establish an artist’s “handwriting” to help experts attribute paintings. ...

    2008-09-04 18:42:06 GMT

  • Biomedicine: Tiny medical robots are being developed that could perform surgery inside patients with greater precision than existing methods

    IN THE 1966 film “Fantastic Voyage”, a submarine carrying a team of scientists is shrunk to the size of a microbe and injected into a dying man. The crew’s mission is to save the man’s life by dissolving a blood clot deep inside his brain. After a harrowing journey through the patient’s body, the scientists succeed: the clot is destroyed and the patient cured.

    For decades, scientists and fiction writers alike have been fascinated by the possibility of tiny machines that can enter a patient, travel to otherwise inaccessible regions, and then diagnose or repair problems with far less pain and with far greater precision than existing medical procedures. In his famous speech from 1959, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, Richard Feynman, an American physicist, called this concept “swallow the surgeon”. More recently proponents of nanotechnology have imagined swarms of “nanobots”—tiny machines just billionths of a metre, or nanometres, across—that might fix mutations in a person’s DNA or kill off cancer cells before they have a chance to develop into a tumour. ...

    2008-09-04 18:42:06 GMT

  • Russia could find that it is getting more than it bargained for

    EVEN by Russia’s recent bloody standards, it was a brazen killing. Magomed Yevloyev, the editor of an opposition website in Russia’s north Caucasus territory of Ingushetia, was detained by the police as he arrived in Nazran on a flight from Moscow on August 31st. Within minutes he was dead, having allegedly tried to seize a policeman’s rifle and been shot in the head. His body was dumped outside the region’s main hospital.

    The Ingush authorities say they are investigating an accidental death but nobody takes this seriously. There were reports that Mr Yevloyev quarrelled with the region’s president, Murat Zyazikov, who was on the flight. Ingushetia’s interior minister, Musa Medov, is said to have personally supervised his arrest. Memorial, a Russian human-rights group, called the killing a “demonstrative and cynical crime” and “act of state terror”. ...

    2008-09-04 18:42:06 GMT
  • The Rev. Jesse Jackson says he is feeling much better after being treated overnight at a Chicago hospital after experiencing ...
    2008-09-04 16:30:40 GMT
  • A Long Island man is accused of setting a fire in his home that damaged 12 other apartments and sent a newborn and an elderly woman to the hospital.
    2008-09-04 15:47:44 GMT
  • UPDATED 10:29 A.M. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's tenure as mayor of Detroit is over. He just entered into a plea agreement, according to prosecutor Lisa Lindsey. Advertisement The deal calls for Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice by committing perjury, agreeing to serve four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, and serve five years' probation. He also agreed not to run for office during that five-year span. The mayor will turn over his state pension to the City of Detroit, which paid $8.4 million to settle two whistle-blower lawsuits three former cops filed against the city. The mayor was charged with eight felony counts ranging from conspiracy to perjury to misconduct in office to obstruction of justice after the Free Press revealed that the mayor lied on the witness stand during a police whistle-blower trial and gave misleading testimony about whether he intended to fire a deputy police chief investigating allegations of wrongdoing by members of his inner circle. Just before huddling with his attorney, a smiling Kilpatrick jousted with reporters sitting in the first row of the courtroom. He, apparently good-naturedly, told them their reports were wrong and they needed to check their sources. He did not elaborate. He also shook hands with Christine Beatty, his former chief of staff and ex-lover. Beatty has left the courtroom with her attorneys, Mayer and Jeff Morganroth, and a man believed to be her pastor. First lady Carlita Kilpatrick is in the courtroom. This is the first time she's been in a courtroom with Beatty since the scandal started in January. The mayor has some other familiar faces in the courtroom, including Marc Andre Cunningham, a former aide to Kilpatrick resigned shortly after the Free Press reported that he had been using a city-issued cell phone that was tapped by the FBI last year. Cunningham, who acted as the mayor's valet before becoming his liaison to the film industry, has said he did not believe he was using the cell phone at the time it was tapped and he said his resignation had nothing to do with the Free Press report. Prosecutor Douglas Baker of the Michigan Attorney General's office and Mayer Morganroth, attorney for Beatty, are in Groner's courtroom. Wayne County prosecutors have also entered the courtroom. Kilpatrick's lawyers entered with a member of the mayor's police protection team. Earlier, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Moran and two defense lawyers for Kilpatrick left Cadillac Place where they met for about 45 minutes with Gov. Jennifer Granholm. In January, the newspaper published text messages Kilpatrick and his then-chief of staff Christine Beatty exchanged on city issued pagers. Worthy cited the investigation in March, when he charged Kilpatrick with eight felonies and Beatty with seven. Earlier this week, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy had offered the mayor six months in jail. That apparently was lowered to four months by Wednesday night. At one point Wednesday afternoon, Kilpatrick met with his department directors and staff at a regular meeting. The subject of his criminal cases was raised, said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a private meeting. The subject of the mayor's leaving office came up, but Kilpatrick did not commit one way or the other and urged his top staff to remain focused, this source said. The mayor's plea likely means Gov. Jennifer Granholm will cancel a second day of removal hearings for the mayor. The historic proceedings began Wednesday at Cadillac Place, the state office building located in the New Center, about 10 minutes from the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice where Kilpatrick entered his equally historic guilty plea. Earlier this morning, Kilpatrick attorney Gerald Evelyn and prosecutor Rob Moran were seen leaving Cadillac Place. They declined to speak with reporters. Kilpatrick's former chief of staff and ex-lover Christine Beatty, who also is charged with felonies in the scandal, was not included in any plea discussions, her lawyer said Wednesday. "We were not part of any meeting," Mayer Morganroth said late Wednesday afternoon. "We plan to be in court in the morning and we'll see what happens then." Kilpatrick is also facing two felony charges for allegedly assaulting deputies trying to serve a subpoena last month at the home of his sister, Ayanna. Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox's office is handling that case. Meanwhile, Granholm, who began historic proceedings Wednesday to help her decide whether she will remove Kilpatrick from office, postponed Day 2 of her hearing by an hour today, to 10 a.m., to give Kilpatrick's situation a chance to develop this morning. If Kilpatrick pleads guilty in his criminal cases and resigns, Granholm's hearing could be canceled. Kilpatrick's former chief of staff and ex-lover Christine Beatty, who also is charged with felonies in the scandal, was not included in any plea discussions Wednesday, her lawyer said. "We were not part of any meeting," Mayer Morganroth said late Wednesday afternoon. "We plan to be in court in the morning and we'll see what happens then." The announcement of a possible deal on Wednesday for Kilpatrick was sent in an e-mail at 4:41 p.m. from the prosecutor's office and sent journalists scurrying from Granholm's hearing room in Detroit's New Center to the courthouse downtown. By 5 p.m., word began to spread that the deal -- which was supposed to be announced at 5:15 p.m. -- would not happen. In another e-mail sent at 5:44 p.m., the prosecutor's office backed off the plea agreement, saying only that Kilpatrick would be in court this morning for a routine hearing before Groner. Unfazed by the commotion, Granholm continued with her proceeding, which featured testimony from key figures in the text message scandal. The governor vocally intervened at one point to stop sniping between Kilpatrick general counsel Sharon McPhail and Mike Stefani, the lawyer for three former cops. Stefani obtained incriminating text messages last year between Kilpatrick and Beatty. The Free Press published excerpts of those messages in January, showing Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath at the whistle-blower trial brought by Stefani's clients last fall. The newspaper's published investigation sparked the scandal, and the paper's subsequent public records lawsuit unearthed a secret deal in which Kilpatrick approved settling the whistle-blower suits for $8.4 million, in part to hide his text messages. In March, Worthy announced felony charges against Kilpatrick and Beatty. The pair face multiple counts of perjury, misconduct in office, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. On Tuesday, after courts cleared the way for Granholm to honor a request by the Detroit City Council and hold the removal hearing, Worthy hardened her stance on jail time for Kilpatrick. The mayor had agreed to plead guilty to two of the eight felonies in the perjury case, leaving him with a criminal record that could not be expunged. The prosecutor insisted that he serve at least six months. A number of Detroit pastors have recently urged Worthy to relax her demands on the amount of jail time Kilpatrick would be required to serve, according to a person close to the negotiations. The mayor also faces two felony assault charges. That case, which remains pending, is being prosecuted by the office of state Attorney General Mike Cox. Contact JIM SCHAEFER at 313-223-4542 or jschaefer@freepress.com. Staff writers Ben Schmitt, Zachary Gorchow and Tom Walsh contributed to this report.
    2008-09-04 15:35:17 GMT
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