Lai v. Gottlieb Mem’l Hosp. – May 2015 (Summary)

NATIONAL PRACTITIONER DATA BANK

Lai v. Gottlieb Mem’l Hosp., No. 1-14-2319 (Ill. App. Ct. May 22, 2015)

The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed a lower decision denying a physician’s request for an injunction against a hospital seeking to prevent the hospital from filing a report with the National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”).

The litigation arose out of the hospital’s summary suspension of the physician’s surgical privileges which was based on complications that a patient experienced. Shortly after the hospital’s medical executive committee voted to uphold the suspension and terminate the physician’s privileges, the physician resigned from the medical staff. The hospital informed the physician that because he did not request a hearing of the summary suspension, two reports would be filed with the NPDB, one related to the summary suspension action which became final when he did not request a hearing and one related to his resignation because it occurred while he was under investigation. The physician’s request for the injunction sought to enjoin the hospital from filing either report based on his argument that the summary suspension process did not comply with state law.

The trial court held that the physician’s resignation while under investigation was a separate and distinct matter from the summary suspension and that the hospital was required to report that resignation whether or not appropriate procedures that complied with state and federal law had been followed for the summary suspension action. The appellate court agreed, noting that the reporting of a physician’s surrender of privileges during an investigation is a separate and distinct legal question from a hospital’s authority to report a summary suspension after a physician has had an opportunity to exercise his or her due process rights. Here, the physician’s due process rights were not violated because the hospital agreed not to report the physician’s summary suspension to the NPDB until defendant exercised the proper procedures.