A North Carolina physician is lobbying federal regulators to end corporate practice of medicine, the Citizen Times reported Oct. 30.
Mitchell Li, MD, an emergency physician and founder of advocacy group Take Medicine Back, and two others published a working paper Oct. 26, "The corporate practice of medicine: A call to action to the profession back from corporate interests."
The paper attributes the deterioration of corporate practice of medicine to decisions by the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court to not treat medicine differently than any other competitor in the 1970s.
"While prohibitions on the corporate practice of medicine have been deemed anti-competitive, the unintended consequences of regulating the medical profession like other trades have been dire," the working paper said. "The result is the unbridled practice of medicine by corporations whose obligations are to shareholders and not to patients."
According to the paper, most states prohibit or restrict corporate practice, but the laws are not effective or enforced. It calls the emergence of private equity in medicine a "progression of the disease."
The paper calls for a national ban on corporate medicine and for laws to be strengthened. It also encourages physicians to unionize, saying it is "a valuable tool to combat corporate retribution and advocate for a work environment conducive to safe patient care in lieu of broader, systemic action."