Green v. City of St. Petersburg

• Decision Date: 11 April 1944
• Citation: 17 So.2d 517,154 Fla. 339
• Court: Florida Supreme Court
• Parties: GREEN v. CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG et al.

17 So.2d 517

154 Fla. 339

GREEN v. CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG et al.

Florida Supreme Court

April 11, 1944

Harris & Kooman, of St. Petersburg, for petitioner.

Erle B Askew, Lewis T. Wray, and Harry L. Young, all of St Petersburg, for respondents.

TERRELL, Justice.

The City of St Petersburg owns and operates Mound Park Hospital. It is operated on a self-supporting plan but all deficits in administration are paid from municipal funds. T. H. Green, a resident physician and taxpayer and member of the General Staff of the Hospital, is permitted full use of its facilities for all purposes except the performance of major operations.

He made application for appointment to the associate surgical staff which would give him unrestricted use of the facilities of the hospital for all purposes, but being refused this request, he made demand on the City Manager for permission to use the facilities of the hospital for the performance of major operations. This demand being refused, he filed his bill of complaint in the circuit court praying that the City be restrained from interfering with him in the use of the facilities of the Hospital for the performance of major operations. This is an appeal by certiorari from an order denying a motion for decree on the issues made by the bill and answer.

The primary question presented is whether or not petitioner, a resident physician and taxpayer of St. Petersburg, Florida, has a legal right to the unrestricted use of the facilities of Mound Park Hospital, for the performance of major operations on his patients.

Owning and administering hospitals was not a function of government under the common law. Sanction for their ownership must therefore be sought under the statute. Chapter 15505, Special Acts of 1931, authorizes the City of St. Petersburg to establish and maintain hospitals. Mound Park Hospital was constructed pursuant to this act and is being operated as one of the administrative departments of the City. The City Manager is clothed with power to prescribe rules and regulations for its administration and is required to make full report of its affairs in writing to the City Council.

Mound Park Hospital is operated by the City in its corporate capacity. It is on the list of hospitals approved by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons. To enjoy these valuable privileges, it is required to and does maintain a specified staff organization and prescribed rules governing said staff. These rules require that in order to secure the privileges of the hospital, physicians and surgeons be first placed on the Junior Surgical Staff for a probationary period of not less than two years. They may then be appointed to the Associate Surgical Staff where they are required to perform twenty major operations under competent supervision when they are awarded membership on the Major Surgical Staff. Members of the Major Surgical Staff are entitled to unrestricted use of the facilities of the hospital for major operations.

The reason for these rules is to establish and uphold the high standard of the hospital, to meet the requirements of the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians and Surgeons, to insure those entering the hospital for treatment that they will secure skillful service and to protect the City and its taxpayers in the administration of the hospital. They are not for the purpose of discriminating against any physician but all are required to conform to them as a prerequisite to the use of its facilities for major operations.

The law is settled in this country that a municipality may regulate and control the operation of a hospital provided by it and that in the exercise of such power, it may exclude those not shown to have met its requirements. Richardson v. City of Miami, 144 Fla. 294, 198 So. 51. There can certainly be no question about the power of a municipality to prescribe reasonable rules and regulations defining qualification to practice the medical profession in a hospital provided by it. Hayman v. City of Galveston, 273 U.S. 414, 47 S.Ct. 363, 71 L.Ed. 714; Harris v. Thomas, Tex.Civ.App., 217 S.W. 1068. See also City of Miami v. Oates, Fla., 10 So.2d 721.

The record shows that appellant is on the general staff of Mound Park Hospital and as such is permitted to treat his patients and perform minor surgical operations. In other words, he has unrestricted use of the hospital for all purposes except the performance of major operations and objects to qualifying as a major surgeon under the rules of the hospital in order to acquire this privilege, notwithstanding every other physician who practices major surgery with its facilities has so qualified. He contends that he should be granted a privilege not given to the members of the medical profession generally.

To contend that being a resident taxpayer and practicing physician of the City gives him a constitutional right to the unrestricted use of the facilities of a hospital provided by the City presents a test of our constitutional theory that we have not heretofore been confronted with. It is a test that takes more for a solvent than mere dogma, or a pair of scissors, a pot of paste and an ipsi dixit. The practice of major surgery is a highly specialized field and is recognized as a delicate art. The majority of physicians admit that it requires special skill and training and do not [pretend to] enter that field. It is an art that cannot be acquired by technical training alone but must come through actual practice and experience. Skill in materia medica in no sense connotes skill in major surgery. It is utterly futile to contend in our day that one be permitted to take a scalpel in hand and explore the cranium, the thorax or the abdomen and patch the viscera, remove a tumor or amputate a limb before he demonstrates his qualification to do so. Most assuredly when a municipality furnishes a hospital operating room and other facilities for doing this and is responsible to patients for the negligent use of these facilities, it has a right to know that t...