Kime v. Dignity Health, Inc. (Mar. 29, 2024, A166748) __ Cal.App.5th __ [2024 WL 1337210], ordered published April 25, 2024
Dr. Ryan Kime resigned his privileges at a hospital while under investigation, after he was summarily suspended for unilaterally and improperly diverting an emergency room patient to another hospital without performing a medical screening. He also had made an inappropriate gesture toward a nurse. After that hospital filed a Business & Professions Code section 805 report, the Medical Board publicly reprimanded Dr. Kime. He then applied for an emergency physician position with a medical group that had an exclusive contract to staff the emergency room at Dignity Health’s Mercy Hospital. The group submitted Dr. Kime’s application for privileges, but Mercy declined to process it because the application reflected the public reprimand and his prior suspension of privileges, which made him ineligible for privileges at Mercy. Dr. Kime sued Dignity for failing to offer him a hearing, which he alleged was a violation of his statutory procedural rights and his common law right to fair procedure. The trial court granted Dignity’s motion for summary judgment, and Dr. Kime appealed.
The Court of Appeal affirmed. The court held that the exclusive service contract between the emergency medical group and Mercy specified quasi-legislative eligibility requirements for privileges (including no prior suspensions or reprimands) that Dr. Kime did not satisfy. The court explained that no hearing was required by statute because the decision to stop processing Dr. Kime’s application was not an adjudicatory/quasi-judicial decision and therefore was not reportable under section 805. Similarly, the court held that, to the extent the common law right to fair procedure has not been preempted by California’s comprehensive peer review statutory scheme, there is no common law right to a hearing when an application for privileges is not processed due to lack of qualifications/eligibility.
Prepared by H. Thomas Watson and Peder K. Batalden, Horvitz & Levy, LLP
California Society for Healthcare Attorneys
1215 K Street, Suite 700
Sacramento, CA 95814
