Revision of the Any Willing Provider law continues to be the most important statewide legislative issue we face.

It is critical that we maintain our support for legislative action that will return the original law to its original intent to protect the private practice of medicine in Idaho.

The current law has been interpreted to allow closed physician hospital networks to grow and thrive. If allowed to continue unabated, this network mania could have the sobering effect of putting most of us out of business.

Our efforts to introduce legislation this past session to “fix” the Any Willing Provider statute were unsuccessful. This must not happen again.

Our second concern is the threat of re-introduction of the Hospital Immunity Bill. This Bill would have given hospitals the unprecedented ability to singlehandedly terminates physician’s privileges without recourse.

We thought we had successfully modified this bill at the IMA meeting last summer. Unfortunately the revisions that were passed at the annual meeting were not included in the final bill. This must not happen again.

The undersigned have elected to call a special meeting of independent physicians to discuss our legislative agenda for next year.