Healthcare Law

 What claims could Dr. Stuart assert against the other physicians, and what defenses could the other physicians raise? Discuss the elements of each potential claim and defense, as well as your evaluation of the likelihood of success on each claim or defense. Use the following activity: The North Florida Women’s Center (the “Center”) is a nonprofit organi- zation that provides counseling and assistance to women in Tallahassee and nearby areas of Florida and Georgia. Last year, the Center’s board of directors decided to expand its services by providing healthcare services to women, including obstetric and gynecological (OB/GYN) services, family planning, contraception, and abortion. The Center will provide these services on a sliding-fee scale, depending on the patient’s income and health insurance. The Center has a written contract with Mary Ellen Stuart, M.D., who is licensed to practice medicine in the state of Florida and is board certi- fied in OB/GYN. Dr. Stuart will care for a large number of patients, some of whom will have no health insurance and limited financial resources. Therefore, both the Center and Dr. Stuart intend to make extensive use of nonphysician providers, such as physician assistants, family nurse practitioners, and midwives. They also want their patients to have a choice in childbirth. Therefore, patients will be able to choose between home birth with only a midwife or hospital birth with Dr. Stuart. Dr. Stu- art does not intend to use midwives at the hospital. In October 2012, Dr. Stuart applied for medical staff membership and clinical privileges at Tallahassee General Hospital (“General”), which is owned and operated by the county and is one of seven hos- pitals in the county. Because General is close to the Georgia state line, General and its physicians treat a substantial number of patients from Georgia and Florida. On November 15, 2012, while her application was pending, the 50 current members of General’s OB/GYN staff held a meeting, which was called for the purpose of reviewing Dr. Stuart’s application. At the meeting, several doctors expressed their concerns about Dr. Stuart, the Center’s new healthcare program, the issue of home birth, and the use of midwives. They were worried about having to take care of the Center’s home-birth patients in an emergency. For example, if a home- birth patient had a medical emergency during home delivery, the patient would be rushed to General, where she would be cared for by the OB/ GYN physician on call, even though she was not the patient of that phy- sician and that physician had never seen the patient before the emer- gency. The physicians indicated that the potential malpractice liability under those circumstances was problematic.