Doctors sue to topple Georgia law regulating health industry… | www.myajc.com

Two Cartersville ob/gyns filed suit Tuesday to overturn the state’s health care regulatory process, saying it restricts competition and is unconstitutional.

Drs. Hugo Ribot and Malcolm Barfield are challenging the Georgia Certificate of Need program, a complex set of regulations governing the creation and expansion of medical facilities.

The Certificate of Need process has long been controversial because hospitals often use it to challenge competitors’ proposed projects. It has also pitted doctors against hospitals in battles over building surgery centers.

The physicians’ lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court, is believed to be the first such litigation seeking to overturn the state’s entire Certificate of Need, or CON, program, said Glenn Delk, an Atlanta attorney for the physicians.

Georgia’s hospital industry generally has been a fierce defender of the CON laws, maintaining that hospitals need money-making services such as surgery protected by regulation to offset the financial losses they incur through intensive care, trauma treatment and other unprofitable services.

But the physicians’ lawsuit says Georgia’s CON laws “are a restraint on competition, economic liberty and consumer choice.”

The CON regulations “encourage and facilitate state-granted monopolies and have the effect of restricting competition in the provision of health care services,” the lawsuit says.

via Doctors sue to topple Georgia law regulating health industry… | www.myajc.com.