The physicians of City of Hope Medical Group in Monrovia, Calif., have issued a vote of "overwhelming loss of confidence" in hospital CEO Michael Friedman and the hospital administration at City of Hope, a renowned cancer center.
The group has also filed a lawsuit against the medical center, alleging the hospital wrongfully terminated nearly all its physician research and oversight services and is seeking to control the doctors through a “medical foundation,” which the physicians believe is illegal.
This structure includes a for-profit professional corporation created by City of Hope and owned by City of Hope’s corporate chief medical officer, Alexandra Levine, MD.
The City of Hope Medical Group is an academic medical practice employing 187 physicians, or roughly 90 percent of the physicians who provide services at City of Hope Medical Center.
“The City of Hope wants to call this new structure a non-profit medical foundation, but it’s really a sham,” said Lawrence Weiss, MD, president of the City of Hope Medical Group. “City of Hope’s model is to fully control doctors through its parent board of City of Hope, none of whom are practicing physicians.”
The physicians have been trying to convince the hospital’s administration to seek alternative legal structures or extend the term of the current research and physician oversight agreement.
The California Medical Association released a statement earlier this month in support of the doctors.
“The City of Hope National Medical Center Corporation is abandoning the medical group entirely to create a model giving it control over crucial decisions made by physicians about medical care,” said CMA president Brennan Cassidy, MD. “The corporation’s blatant power grab violates California’s sacrosanct patient protection prohibiting hospitals from directly hiring physicians and exerting influence over a doctor’s medical judgment as to what is in the best interest of a patient.”
According to Weiss, the vote of lost confidence in Friedman and his administration was in part prompted by the hospital’s termination of physician services in the departments of radiology, radiation oncology, pathology and anesthesia.
“To date, we have received no plan from the medical center on how it intends to provide the same level of research and patient care without a contract with the doctors,” said Weiss. “It is wishful thinking that all the doctors will want to be controlled – illegally as we contend – by the hospital, particularly when 113 out of 114 physicians voted against their plan.”
A lawsuit filed by City of Hope against the doctors, meanwhile, alleges that certain provisions of the medical group’s employment agreements with the physicians are unenforceable and should thereby allow City of Hope to openly solicit the doctors into its new for-profit medical group.
“The lawsuit by City of Hope is nothing but a way for the hospital to try and re-write history,” said Weiss. “They have spent the last several months trying to convince everyone that they are not trying to hire our doctors away from us, and now they are suing the doctors to try and make their solicitations to hire them legal.”
The medical group claims the hospital has not yet formed a medical foundation and therefore can’t be illegal.
“What they fail to mention is that every foundation in California requires a professional corporation with 40 doctors in it before the foundation paperwork can be filed,” said Weiss.
Levine, City of Hope’s CMO, has demanded individual meetings with group physicians and has offered to support up to $10,000 of legal costs per doctor to seek counsel on how to break their employment contracts with City of Hope Medical Group.
The hospital, in its lawsuit, faults the physicians for notifying patients of the impending termination between the doctors and hospital corporation.
Weiss said the medical group believes it has an obligation to its patients who have come to trust their doctors, claiming the physician board of the group reviewed and approved the letter before it was sent.