Good Bill Regulating Hospital Systems In NC Senate

Now that so many physicians are controlled by hospital systems, the landscape for patients is precarious. We saw the potential for wrong-doing by hospital systems become blatant– for all to see- during Covid.

An excellent bill is moving through the NC Senate. It would do several things:

• Provide whistleblower protections to physicians who complain about conditions that impact patient safety or when breaches of ethics take place;
• Makes illegal restrictive covenants (“non-competes”) for physicians;
• Sharply limits non-disclosure agreements required of physicians to protect communications about violations that impact patient safety or ethics;
• Limits hospital CEO salaries for non-profit institutions.

This is a bill that ought to pass the Senate. If it does, I suspect that Rep. Donny Lambeth in the NC House– the former Winston-Salem hospital administrator who represents hospital systems in the state legislature– will do everything he can to kill it.