Doctor, Lawyer, and Hosptial Administrator: A New Triangle

Hospitals are deeply invovled in the great majority of medicolegal case problems. Yet surprisingly little attention has been given to the relation of the hospital to doctor lawyer-patient situations as a factor in itself. Most discussions of hospitals and law deal generally with hospital liability for negligence of hospital agents-as though the hospital were a monolithic entity in itself. Lawyers seldom look further into the relation of the doctor to the hospital administration and vice versa; deeming this to be a matter of small concern to them.

Doctors, of course, know well the importance of hospital politics and procedures to medical practice. Lawyers may be astonished at how directly medicolegal cases are affected by the complex relation of physicians to hospital administrations; at how important this relation is to the patient, and thus to the attorney who represents that patient, the physician, or the hospital.