This earlier post reported on the controversial decision of Baylor College of Medicine earlier this year to sever its long ties with The Methodist Hospital and switch its teaching hospital relationship to St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. That news rocked the medical community in and around Houston’s famed Texas Medical Center.
Well, it looks like Methodist is upping the ante on Baylor. This Chronicle story reports on Methodist’s move to create a special corporation that will employ doctors effective July 1. The corporation may force Medical Center doctors to decide between Baylor and Methodist, which — as noted earlier here — has been a major issue since Baylor ended their historic relationship.
Apparently, that difficult choice has already been put to Baylor doctors who are Methodist division chiefs. The physicians have been asked to stay and told they cannot maintain practices at St. Luke’s or a new clinic that Baylor plans to build.
In creating the new physicians’ organization along with a previously announced research institute, Methodist will allow be able to hire physicians and scientists on the condition that they do not work for Baylor. Texas hospitals typically create such physician organizations because of the state law that forbids hospitals from employing doctors in order to lessen the pressure that a hospital’s financial conditoin would impair doctors’ medical decisions.
Methodist’s new organizations turn up the heat on the festering issue that has loomed since the breakup of the historic partnership — that is, whether Baylor faculty members will elect to remain at Methodist rather than relocate to St. Luke’s. As noted here, a group of Baylor faculty publicly opposed Baylor’s decision to split from Methodist on those grounds. More than 1,000 doctors currently practice at Methodist and approximately 300 of them are currently Baylor faculty members.
H’mm. Any bets as to when the first “tortious interference with contractual relations-type” lawsuit will emerge from this brewing controversy?