Certificate of Need News
Community hospitals sue over surgery status
2/27/2009
A group of community hospitals filed suit Monday to overturn a state agency ruling that involves a long-running feud between Georgia's general surgeons and the hospitals.
The suit by the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals challenges a rule approved Dec. 13 by the State Board of Community Health that reclassifies general surgeons from "multi-specialty" status to a "single-specialty" classification.
The rule change is designed to allow general surgeons to set up ambulatory surgery centers without going through Georgia's certificate-of-need process, the 59-hospital alliance said in the Superior Court suit filed in Dougherty County.
Read this Associated Press article published in the January 1, 2008 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
