Corporate Medicine Is On Trial

Corporate medicine is on trial in Oregon. Here's your update. Quick recap. Peace decided not to renew the contract of Eugene Emergency Physicians, an independent physician-owned group who's been practicing in the Eugene area for 35 years. Instead, they gave that contract to Apollo MD, a corporate management group based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Eugene emergency physicians knew that there were some shenanigans going on and that Apollo MD coming into Oregon likely violates state law, a corporate practice of medicine law that was passed in Oregon last year. So, Eugene Emergency Physicians filed a lawsuit against Peace Health and Apollo MD and we just had day two of the hearings about this lawsuit. And can I just say I listened to most of the testimony today and it was like watching a few good men for the first time. It was captivating. I now understand why my mom watched the OJ Simpson trial updates every night for like 9 months. I'll give you the highlights. So, the CEO of Apollo MD testify for about an hour. And hearing him have to explain the clown car structure of Apollo MD was hilarious. There's companies within companies owned by dozens of different people. Some of them see patients, some of them don't. They're in different places around the country. Even he didn't seem to know the full extent of Apollo MD and the structure of it and what goes where and does what. Let me tell you how these management service organizations, MSOs like Apollo MD and so many other usually private equitybacked companies operating on a national level in a corporate structure. Let me tell you how they operate. Apollo MD will receive a contract from a health system like Peace Health to come in and staff and manage the emergency services within that hospital system. However, many states have anti-corporate practice of medicine laws specifically designed to prevent corporate entities from owning and influencing clinical decision-making. So, MSOs like Apollo MD found a loophole. Once they get the contract from a health system, they start a dummy company and they take one of their handpicked physicians and they let them be the owner of this new company. In the case of the Oregon situation, it's Lane Emergency Physicians, a company that was just started like a month ago. This allows Apollo MD to appear compliant with anti-corporate practice of medicine laws by naming a physician as owner while still having Apollo MD pull the strings behind the scenes. And Oregon's new anti-corporate practice of medicine law is designed to close that very loophole. We also heard testimony from a couple of the Eugene emergency physicians which went about like this. Why won't you work for Apollo MD? We don't want to. Then at least help us with the transition. No. Why not? You're taking our jobs. Why would we want to help you do that? But we need your help. Why? When we applied for the contract, we kind of assumed you'd join us. Nope. Well, if you don't help us, the entire hospital system might collapse. Probably should have thought about that before you applied for the contract. Judge, you heard it here first. These doctors want patients to die. I'm not really exaggerating either. The Apollo MD lawyers were trying to paint Eugene emergency physicians as bad guys for not wanting to help the people taking their jobs. And by the way, the support from the emergency medicine community in not taking these Apollo MD locoms jobs in Oregon has been awesome. They're scrambling right now. They have zero credentialed MDs to come in and replace the Eugene emergency physicians. So, keep up that pressure. There's going to be more testimony tomorrow. I'll update you as we