During the past decade, a disturbing trend has accelerated: Health policy and practices are increasingly being driven by economic pressures. While containment of health care costs is a worthy endeavor, it is the physician’s responsibility to ensure that patient care is not compromised in the process. This can only be achieved by ensuring that medical staff quality assurance mechanisms are supported, not circumvented, so that physicians can continue to work in their patients’ best interests.

The term “economic credentialing” has long been used to describe the use of economic criteria to determine a physician’s qualification for medical staff membership or privileges. CMA ON-CALL document #1212, “Economic Credentialing and Exclusive Contracts,” discusses the rights and responsibilities of hospital medical staffs to ensure that economic considerations do not negatively impact access to and quality of medically necessary patient care. The document includes a discussion of the recent Arkansas Baptist Health case, in which the Arkansas Supreme Court decided, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, that business interests of a hospital cannot interfere in the physician-patient relationship.

Contact: CMA’s legal information line, 415/882-5144 or legalinfo@cmanet.org.