Opinion ID: 1140978
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Chapters 395 and 766, Florida Statutes

Text: Just as chapter 458 regulates medical practice, chapter 395, titled Hospital Licensing and Registration, regulates hospital practice. Significantly, there is nothing in the provisions of chapter 395 that regulate hospital staff privileges that addresses physician compliance with the financial responsibility requirements of section 458.320. First, section 395.0191, Florida Statutes (2006), which outlines the rules pertaining to hospital staff privileges, does not require the hospital to ensure physician compliance with section 458.320. [10] Second, sections 395.0193(2)(4), Florida Statutes (2006), which outline the hospital's duties in denying, suspending, or revoking staff privileges, do not require the hospital to take action when a physician fails to maintain financial responsibility. See § 395.0193(2)-(4), Fla. Stat. (requiring hospitals and their boards to review, and if necessary, take action in situations where staff-privileged physicians are incompetent, using drugs, have mental impairments, are found liable for medical negligence, or fail to abide by hospital policies). [11] If the Legislature intended to impose an affirmative duty on a hospital to condition the grant of staff privileges on a physician's establishing financial responsibility, it would have included this requirement in the sections governing a hospital's grant of staff privileges. Like section 458.320, section 766.110, Florida Statutes (2006), was enacted as part of the Comprehensive Medical Malpractice Reform Act of 1985. See ch. 85-175, §§ 23, 28, Laws of Fla. [12] Section 766.110(1) provides that all health care facilities have a duty to assure comprehensive risk management and the competence of their medical staff and personnel through careful selection and review, and are liable for a failure to exercise due care in fulfilling these duties. Conspicuously absent from section 766.110 is any mention of civil liability for a hospital's failure to ensure the financial competence of its staff-privileged physicians. The fact that section 766.110 expressly imposes a duty on and creates a cause of action against hospitals for a breach of that duty provides a strong indication that the Legislature did not intend to impose civil liability on hospitals in section 458.320. Cf. Golf Channel v. Jenkins, 752 So.2d 561, 564 (Fla.2000) (indicating that when sections are enacted as part of the same session law they should be construed together so that they illuminate each other and are harmonized) (internal quotation marks omitted). Had the Legislature intended to hold hospitals liable for failing to ensure physician financial responsibility, it would have either included such a duty and cause of action within section 766.110 or used parallel language to impose civil liability in section 458.320. See Cason, 944 So.2d at 315; Murthy, 644 So.2d at 986.