Opinion ID: 2023864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Corporate Practice of Medicine Doctrine

Text: The corporate practice of medicine doctrine prohibits corporations from providing professional medical services. Although a few states have codified the doctrine, the prohibition is primarily inferred from state medical licensure acts, which regulate the profession of medicine and forbid its practice by unlicensed individuals. See A. Rosoff, The Business of Medicine: Problems with the Corporate Practice Doctrine, 17 Cumb. L.Rev. 485, 490 (1987). The rationale behind the doctrine is that a corporation cannot be licensed to practice medicine because only a human being can sustain the education, training, and character-screening which are prerequisites to receiving a professional license. Since a corporation cannot receive a medical license, it follows that a corporation cannot legally practice the profession. See 17 Cumb. L.Rev. at 491; see also Kerner, 362 Ill. at 454,200 N.E. 157. The rationale of the doctrine concludes that the employment of physicians by corporations is illegal because the acts of the physicians are attributable to the corporate employer, which cannot obtain a medical license. See M. Hall, Institutional Control of Physician Behavior: Legal Barriers to Health Care Cost Containment, 137 U. Pa. L.Rev. 431, 509-10 (1988). The prohibition on the corporate employment of physicians is invariably supported by several public policy arguments which espouse the dangers of lay control over professional judgment, the division of the physician's loyalty between his patient and his profitmaking employer, and the commercialization of the profession. See A. Willcox, Hospitals and the Corporate Practice of Medicine, 45 Cornell L.Q. 432, 442-43 (1960); see also Kerner, 362 Ill. at 455-56, 200 N.E. 157, citing Dr. Allison, Dentist, Inc. v. Allison, 360 Ill. 638, 196 N.E. 799(1935).