Appointment as the medical director involves a physician’s responsibility for the oversight of clinical care at a facility and other administrative responsibilities, such as reviewing protocols and procedures, supervising non-physician clinical staff, creating schedules, and participating in quality improvement initiatives. However, it may surprise physicians to learn that their duties as medical director may expose them to lawsuits as though the medical director is the treating physician, even though they did not perform any medical services for the individual plaintiff. While these types of claims against medical directors are generally exploratory and serve to preserve a plaintiff’s claims against any potential party, responding to discovery requests and defending these types of claims can be incredibly time intensive and expensive, which ultimately impacts a physician’s medical malpractice premium.

Physicians may consider adding language to their medical director agreements that require the facility to either defend the medical director or reimburse the medical director for defending these types of claims to potentially avoid an increase in malpractice premium. Physicians should not assume this language is contained in their medical director agreement, and we recommend that physicians retain appropriate legal counsel to review those agreements. This type of requirement may bear some resemblance to the following:

Company will indemnify and hold harmless Physician, and Physician’s successors, assigns, affiliates, shareholders, managers, members, directors, officers, agents, and employees (“Indemnitees”) from and against all liabilities, claims, demands, obligations, losses, fees, recoveries, damages, taxes, interest, costs, recoupments, penalties, and expenses (including but not limited to attorneys’ fees, cost of defense and/or representation, and accounting fees), arising out of or related to: (1) Company’s acts and omissions (professional, administrative and otherwise) under this Agreement; and (2) services rendered by Company, its staff, or its agents to a specific patient of the facility that is unrelated to either: (a) medical services actually rendered by Physician to that specific patient; or, (b) recommendations made by Physician to Company, its staff, or its agents for the care of that specific patient.

If you have any questions regarding your medical director agreement, you can feel free to give a member of Lashly & Baer’s healthcare advisory team a call at 314-621-2939.

The foregoing is provided for information purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter. You should not act, or refrain from acting, on the basis of any content contained herein without seeking legal or other professional advice. The content of this article is current as of the date of publication, and the attorneys at Lashly & Baer, P.C., have no responsibility to update the contents herein.

Prepared by Richard Hill, Lashly & Baer, P.C., 314-436-8317, rhill@lashlybaer.com