SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION emergency medicine, practice

Contractual Relationships Between Emergency Physicians and Hospitals

[This document was developed by the American College of Emergency Phy- sicians Emergency Facilities Committee, and was approved by the Board of Directors on October 20, 1984. American College of Emergency Physicians: Contractual relationships between emergency physicians and hospitals (position statement). Ann Emerg Med January 1985;14:76.]

The American College of Emergency Physicians supports the following general principles for contractual relationships between emergency physi- cians and hospitals:

1. Emergency physicians should not enter into an emergency service ar- rangement with a hospital without a written contract.

2. A contract with an emergency physician or emergency physician group should be fair to the parties involved, should be conducive to excellence of medical care, and should promote the interests of the patients and the com- munity served by the hospital.

3. It is the right and privilege of emergency physicians to set fees for their services.

4. The College recognizes that good medical care is being provided in hos- pitals by physicians under many forms of mutual agreement and many methods of compensation , and accordingly does not endorse any single type of contractual arrangement.

5. ACEP holds that physicians under contract should qualify for and main- tain medical staff membership and clinical privileges in the same manner prescribed in the medical staff bylaws for other members Of the medical staff.

American College of Emergency Physicians Dallas, Texas

Address for reprints: American College of Emergency Physicians, PO Box 619911, Dallas, Texas 75261-9911.

14:1 January 1985 Annals of Emergency Medicine 76/147