Fresno physician says Saint Agnes has taken away his right to treat his own patients | Opinion

After 40 years of practicing internal medicine in Fresno, I am unable effective Dec. 29, 2024 to take care of my own patients admitted to Saint Agnes Medical Center (SAMC).

This is not a choice that I made. SAMC has taken away my right to care for my own patients admitted to the hospital. My crime? Refusing to give away my autonomy and join Vituity, a massive medical corporation that SAMC has given the exclusive right to take care of my patients – regardless of what the patients want.

I hung up my shingle to practice on Thursday Nov. 1, 1984 near Palm and Shaw avenues, joining the late Drs. Bruce Berg, Max Millar and Owen Steinbach. Dr. Dickran Gulesserian joined us in 1994. Twenty years later, Dr. Gulesserian and I joined the now retired Drs. Kantam Gade and Stanley Chang when we built an office at Spruce and Sharon avenues to be in the SAMC corridor.

For 35 years, caring for patients in the hospital has been at the heart of my medical practice. Day to day, this means seeing my patients at SAMC on the day of admission and every day until their discharge, and also fielding calls and texts from nursing staff. I enter orders for their care into the electronic medical record on a daily basis and arrange care from specialists.

It can also mean getting up at 4 a.m. to see a patient admitted to SAMC overnight from the ER, or heading to the hospital after 7 p.m. when I leave my office. I take on this extra work because my patients value it immensely, and that’s personally fulfilling.

If SAMC has its way, patients will no longer be allowed to have their own doctors care for them in the hospital. Instead, patients’ only choice will be Vituity’s hospital-based doctors, some of whom may be temporary traveling physicians. These doctors are likely to be total strangers unfamiliar with my patients’ medical histories, habits, or personal lives. Denying patients the right to choose their own physician is wrong, and we also believe it is illegal.

In an effort to halt SAMC’s radical change, I have joined private practitioner Dr. Ara Soghomonian and physicians Drs. Armen Bedrosian, Michelle Thomas, Ashenafi Legesse, Gurcharan Sidhu, Jiakun Wang, and Alireza Zadsalmat – all affiliated with Central California Hospital Medical Group (CCHMG) – in a lawsuit against SAMC with the goal of regaining our right to care for patients. CCHMG’s physicians take care of both their own hospitalized primary care patients (like I do), and, since 2020, have also worked as hospitalists at SAMC. Several have been affiliated with SAMC for over 20 years, and one for over 40 years.

SAMC was the premier hospital in Fresno when I started, and I have supported it wholeheartedly over the years, including by serving on its Medical Executive Committee (MEC) for nearly 8 years. Unfortunately, SAMC has experienced multiple and accelerating challenges over the last decade. I have witnessed five to six different SAMC administrations.

Twelve years ago, SAMC was taken over by Trinity Health, a nationwide health system, which recently installed Gurvinder Kaur, MD, MHA as President. Dr. Kaur is a former high-level partner of Virtuity and has executed the radical change to an exclusive department. While they claim this change is for patients’ benefit, the medical outcome data for Vituity-run medicine departments at other Central Valley hospitals is no better than SAMC’s department per Medicare Hospital Compare.

What SAMC is doing now is wrong. Although our court case will be pressing forward, I fear SAMC will not change course unless the community speaks out against the hospital’s decision to deny patients access to their own doctors.

I urge the patients and physicians of Fresno – and you, the readers – to let SAMC know their actions are unacceptable, and that the community will not tolerate it.