Minn. court urged to affirm ruling in medical staff bylaws case

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) have urged the Minnesota Supreme Court to affirm a lower court ruling that a hospital’s governing body may unilaterally amend its medical staff bylaws, the AHA stated last week. “When seemingly irreconcilable conflicts arise, it is the hospital's governing body, under which the medical staff operates, that is empowered to act with respect to the relationship between the hospital and the [physicians] who make up the medical staff. Minnesota law unequivocally supports that conclusion,” the AHA brief states.

The original lawsuit, filed in 2012 on behalf of the hospital’s medical staff, alleged that Avera Marshall violated medical staff bylaws and prevented the chief of staff and the hospital’s medical executive committee from fulfilling their duties, the Marshall Independent reported. The Minnesota Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last fall, after the state Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s ruling that the medical staff is not a legal entity with the capacity to sue; and that bylaws do not constitute a contract between the medical staff and the hospital.

MHA and AHA members have an interest in ensuring that, “in the rare instance when dysfunction … does arise, the hospital's governing body is not powerless to effect needed improvements,” the brief states.

Source: AHA