News roundup May 17-21

An emergency medicine physician, who complained about understaffing issues in his emergency department, has been awarded $26 million in a wrongful termination lawsuit.

Language that addresses the EMTALA requirements to assess, stabilize, and determine a patient’s condition can be added to your delineation of privilege forms as applicable to each specialty for which the medical executive committee (MEC) has established call coverage requirements. The language can simply be stated as follows: “Assess, stabilize, and determine disposition of patients with emergent conditions consistent with medical staff policy regarding emergency and consultative call services.”

In a series focused on how professionals in the medical staff services industry are overcoming unique COVID-19 challenges, Medical Staff Briefing is sitting down with physician leaders, MSPs, quality professionals, educators, and consultants across the country to hear about their experiences. This month, we were able to sit down with a veteran consultant and professional speaker with years of experience providing education to her MSP colleagues. Christina Giles, MS, CPMSM, consultant and speaker for C. Giles & Associates and administrative manager for Edge-U-Cate, LLC, in Nashua, New Hampshire, spoke with us about how the pandemic affected her roles as consultant and educator.

The California Court of Appeals, Fourth Appellate District (the "Court"), affirmed a superior court's judgment that a hospital and several physicians being sued could not invoke the anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute because most of the defendant's claims did not arise from protected activities. Additionally, even with the defendant's claims that did arise from protected peer review activity, the Court noted that he still had a probability of succeeding.