El Camino docs hold special meeting El Camino docs hold special meeting (May 06, 2005)

Physicians decry 'deteriorating relationship' with administration

By Kathy Schrenk

Some El Camino Hospital physicians are demanding better treatment from hospital administration, and it looks like, at least in some small ways, they are starting to get its.

Last week about 100 doctors attended a special medical staff meeting to discuss "the deteriorating relationship between the medical staff and administration" at the hospital, according to a petition that was directed to medical staff administration as a request for the meeting.

Several doctors who attended the meeting said that the meeting seemed like a step in the right direction, but that there is much more work to be done.

At the meeting, the doctors agreed to ask the administration to reactivate the badges of 19 anesthesiologists who were locked out during a contract dispute with administration last fall. This request was granted, according to doctors who spoke to the Voice but asked that their names not be used.

"It's a small thing," one of the doctors said of the badges, which allow doctors and nurses to get into medical buildings on the hospital campus. The badges were deactivated when the hospital decided to contract exclusively with the new anesthesiologists who were brought in.

The doctors at the meeting also decided that they would hire their own lawyer to represent them in matters with administration. Currently the hospital pays for a lawyer for the doctors, they said.

Besides asking for this meeting, the petition stated that the doctors wanted to "unify and thereby strengthen the membership and its leadership so that we may better thwart administrative attempts at eroding our ability to self-govern and care for patients" and "develop specific action items to effect change in our relationship with the current administration and hospital board."

The petition was signed by 62 doctors from a wide variety of medical disciplines. However, hospital spokeswoman Judy Twitchell points out that the medical staff has to circulate a petition signed by at least 10 percent of the 489 active medical staff in order to have a special meeting.

Those who sign the petition are in favor of having a meeting, but don't necessarily agree with the statements on the petition, Twitchell said.
E-mail Kathy Schrenk at kshrenk@mv-voice.com

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