Does it feel like there are less solo or small medical practices than there used to be? Does it feel like you are getting all aspects of your care through one large entity, that has, in turn, changed ownership and names some time in the last ten years? It can be nice to get all of your care in one place. But there may be pitfalls. CMG Law Partners Tyler Goldberg-Hoss and Carl-Erich Kruse recently published an article in WSAJ’s Trial News about the struggle of the law keeping up with this corporatization of healthcare.
Healthcare has taken on the appearance of big business in many regions as corporations gobble up clinics and hospitals all over the country. Five large hospital systems manage approximately half of the hospitals in the state: Providence/Swedish, MultiCare, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, UW Medicine, and PeaceHealth. And private equity keeps making inroads into healthcare as they have been buying specialty clinics and small and medium sized hospitals.
As healthcare gets less personal, the need for a robust framework for corporate negligence is more necessary than ever. Indeed, it is often these systems, rather than individual providers, that are providing our care. Generally, healthcare systems owe a duty to patients to have reasonable procedures in place to ensure safe care is provided. The two most common areas where we have seen these claims arise are failures of communication and failures of supervision/monitoring.
The law in this area has been little updated since the Washington State Supreme Court first recognized the corporate negligence doctrine in 1984. And we at CMG Law think that hospitals should have a duty to make sure the policies and procedures it adopted are being followed; that corporate negligence claims are distinct from claims for vicarious liability, and systems-based corporate practice of medicine is not limited to hospitals.
As corporations expand their reach and role in the health care delivered to patients in Washington, so too should the law expand to mirror this reality.
For a deeper dive, read the Trial News article here.
