Court Opinion

ID: 9545196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:08:13.364094+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:18.341536
License: Public Domain

STRUCKMEYER, Vice Chief Justice,
dissenting.
Because I believe that the action of the Board of Directors of the Hoemako Hospital is arbitrary and unreasonable, I feel compelled to dissent.
The majority correctly and fairly point out that Dr. Holmes is the only doctor in the community of Eloy, in Pinal County, Arizona, and that the Hoemako Hospital is the only hospital to which he can as a practical matter take his patients. The majority opinion does not mention that Dr. Holmes has never been sued for malpractice or that Eloy is an incorporated community of 5,381 people with a percentage of Negro and other minority races of 19% (Census, 1970). The loss of staff privileges by Dr. Holmes means that a substantial number of people will be without the services of the doctor of their choice.
I am satisfied that the Court of Appeals properly decided this case and that its opinion correctly disposed of the problems raised by the litigants. I will, however, touch on a few additional points to which the majority of this Court have addressed themselves.
Since a hospital may not be established without a showing “that a public need exists for its construction” (see A.R.S. § 36-421.B.2(d)), hospitals are, in effect, State established monopolies. The Hoemako Hospital is on lands furnished at the taxpayers’ expense by the Pinal County Hospital District pursuant to statute, A.R.S. § 36-1231, et seq. Because the State has created a monopoly which the taxpayers are in part supporting, this Court should hold that if the hospital regulations are attacked as unreasonable, the test should be whether the public needs are best served thereby, not alone whether the hospital may derive some possible benefit.
A hospital regulation which requires a doctor to carry insurance, so that, if the hospital and the doctor are jointly sued, the doctor’s insurance will pay part of the loss, results in two premiums to cover one loss— an economically indefensible business practice. Higher medical costs must inevitably *407result to the people of Eloy. There will no doubt be some who will not seek needed medical services simply because of the expense.
It is not enough to say that the hospital is protecting the doctor’s patients who might be damaged by his lack of skill or care. The hospital has neither a legal nor moral duty to protect the doctor's patients from the doctor. Besides, hospitals have other controls over doctors by which they can be required to keep abreast of and exercise appropriate medical skills. This is but another step down the path of bureaucratic tyranny from which a doctor has no recourse when denied relief by the courts. There is no compelling interest to be served by this regulation. It is unreasonable and oppressive.
I dissent.