Nashville, TN (1888PressRelease)
February 28, 2008 - HMA celebrates Black History month preparing for prejudice allegations against one of its hospitals from local doctors. HMA does not stand by its corporate philosophy “to the highest ethical standards and conduct business in the highest business standards…” by “providing care to patients in a manner which respects the individual dignity of each and every person.” The fact is HMA physician recruitment agreements are fraudulent or intentional misrepresentation, deceptive clinical practices, one-sided or unfair, and exaggerated action deemed oppressive to the minority physician.
The physician’s claim that HMA attempted to prematurely end local physician recruitment agreements by making unsubstantiated allegations against physicians to create a breach of contract through unnecessary audits.
This appears to be a growing trend towards minority physicians. HMA is known for providing inducement of physicians to relocate their practices and move to a new hospital cachement area only to sabotage the physician and eliminate funding of practice capital.
Physicians are lured by HMA based upon false representations as to the assistance of the local hospital to provide or establish the physician in the community. Often the sales pitch includes the "pent up need" for the physician's services in the community and the existence of a favorable payer mix in the community.
The doctors claim HMA used the inducement of an "income guarantee" for the first year to help jump start the practice. The problem is that there was not an enough business in the community to establish a new practice.
In December 2007, Vince Cherry, CEO of University Medical Center, greeted four African American doctors during a Christmas Dinner “hello fellows you know black doctors can not all sit together.” This statement by a CEO shows HMA lack of cultural diversity training, intervention, and sensitivity. Mr. Cherry has failed to apologize or respond to the racially insensitive remarks.
The complaint also alleges that UMC violated the patient assignment process that was in the agreement. This complaint contends that within days of acknowledging that University Medical center emergency department was intentionally assigning patients to non African American physicians. UMC refuses to correct the problem after physicians complained. The physicians stated that patients admitted to their on- call service through UMC hospitalist program were inappropriately discharged and discriminately assigned to non African American preferred UMC staff physicians. UMC has requested private physician’s office: medical charts, sign-in sheets and patient records without patient consent, which violates the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
