Suspended California physician's hearing put on hold

Some say peer review is jeopardized after a hospital revokes a doctor's privileges and keeps delaying an inquiry on the charges.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. June 18, 2001.

More than six months after a San Fernando Valley, Calif., obstetrician-gynecologist had his staff privileges immediately suspended, he is still waiting for the hospital to hold a hearing on the charges.

Now Gil N. Mileikowsky, MD, is asking the Court of Appeal of the State of California to help resolve when Tenet HealthSystem is going to provide him the due process to which he's entitled. Dr. Mileikowsky's lawsuit also questions whether the hospital had the right to "summarily suspend" his privileges in the first place.

The harsh suspension -- where a physician's privileges are immediately revoked without warning -- is intended for doctors who are an "imminent danger" to patient health and safety. The charges the hospital has levied against him don't seem to support that, court documents say.

"This is outrageous conduct by the hospital," said neurologist Robert L. Weinmann, MD, president of the Union of American Physicians & Dentists. "What Tenet HealthSystem has done amounts to a call for arms, and physicians ... should take heed of this case and get involved."

UAPD, the AMA and the California Medical Assn. filed briefs supporting Dr. Mileikowsky's right to a quick hearing.

In November 2000, Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center executives told Dr. Mileikowsky he no longer had medical staff privileges at the hospital. Dr. Mileikowsky wasn't given prior notice and at the time wasn't given a specific reason for the suspension, according to court documents.

About two weeks later, at an informal interview with the hospital's medical executive committee, he received a list of seven charges. The list contained several items that related to events that happened months earlier and in one case, two years earlier. [...]