Opinion ID: 1822510
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: judicial review of hospital privilege proceedings

Text: Garden Park posits that because it is a privately owned hospital, its standards relative to hospital staff privileges for physicians are beyond judicial reproach. Because Garden Park is licensed pursuant to Miss. Code Ann. § 41-9-1 et seq., its argument is unpersuasive. Miss. Code Ann. § 73-25-93(1) (Supp. 1989) states: Any hospital licensed pursuant to sections 41-9-1 et seq. is authorized to suspend, deny, revoke or limit the hospital privileges of any physician practicing or applying to practice therein, if the governing board of such hospital, after consultation with the medical staff considers such physician to be unqualified because of any of the acts set forth in section 73-25-83; provided, however, that the procedures for such actions shall comply with the hospital and/or medical staff bylaw requirements for due process. (Emphasis added). The legislature has clearly limited judicial surveillance of hospital disciplinary proceedings to the narrow inquiry of whether the hospital complied with the procedural due process requirements prescribed by its own bylaws. In adopting this narrow scope of review, the legislature has adopted the rationale espoused by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Truly v. Madison General Hospital, 673 F.2d 763, 765 (5th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 909, 103 S.Ct. 214, 74 L.Ed.2d 170 (1982), a case involving a public hospital, and imposed this limited review to disciplinary actions arising from any hospital licensed. In that case, Dr. Truly brought a civil rights suit based, in part, upon the denial of hospital staff privileges at a public hospital. In affirming the judgment in favor of the hospital, that court said, ... Procedural due process must be accorded at administrative hearings concerned with passing on such qualifications ... great latitude must be accorded the hospital's governing authority both in prescribing and in evaluating all such matters.  (Emphasis added). In Lloyd v. Jefferson Davis Memorial Hospital, 345 So.2d 1046, 1048 (Miss. 1977), a case involving a public hospital, we adopted this same limited standard of review. In Lloyd, a physician filed a complaint against Jefferson Davis Memorial Hospital and its Board of Trustees praying that the chancery court affirmatively enjoin the hospital to grant him full membership on its medical staff. After a hearing, the chancery court remanded the case to the Board of Trustees of the hospital for further review and consideration. The Board of Trustees voted six-to-one to deny staff privileges to the physician. The chancellor affirmed this decision and the physician appealed to this Court. In affirming the chancellor's decision, we adopted the reasoning of Sosa v. Board of Managers of Val Verde Memorial Hospital, 437 F.2d 173, 177 (5th Cir.1971). Quoting from that case, we said: No court should substitute its evaluation of such matters for that of the Hospital Board. It is the Board, not the court, which is charged with the responsibility of providing a competent staff of doctors. Human lives are at stake, and the governing board must be given discretion in its selection so that it can have confidence in the competence and moral commitment of its staff. The evaluation of professional proficiency of doctors is best left to the specialized expertise of their peers, subject only to limited judicial surveillance. The court is charged with the narrow responsibility of assuring that the qualifications imposed by the Board are reasonably related to the operation of the hospital and fairly administered. In short, so long as staff selections are administered with fairness, geared by a rationale compatible with hospital responsibility, and unencumbered with irrelevant considerations, a court should not interfere. In a previous action, Dr. Wong filed civil rights claims against Garden Park, the executive director of the hospital, and various members of the medical staff and board of directors. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Wong v. Stripling, 881 F.2d 200 (5th Cir.1989), affirmed the lower court's dismissal of those claims. At page 202, that court addressed our statutory scheme: Clearly, private hospitals had at common law a right to revoke the staff privileges of physicians for good cause. This legislation simply authorizes action which is already legal, and requires additionally only that the hospital comply with its own bylaws in making staffing decisions. The appeal to the chancery court makes available to the physician a further review of the procedural fairness of the decision. The only question before that court is whether the hospital followed its bylaws. The statutory scheme does not foreclose an independent legal action to determine the propriety of the termination on the facts. In § 73-25-93, the legislature recognized the authority of a licensed hospital to control and regulate its staff privileges. The statute delineates no distinction between private or public hospitals in that it refers to any licensed hospital. Our legislature has engraved into this statute its view that a licensed hospital's decision to suspend, deny, revoke or limit any physician's privileges shall not be subject to judicial review unless the procedures followed violated the licensed hospital's bylaw requirements for due process. With the scope of our review so constricted, we are obliged to consider only whether the procedures followed by Garden Park violated its own bylaw provisions for due process.