CHENNAI: Doctors can thrive without hospitals whereas a hospital can never exist without doctors supporting such institutions by rendering their services. Therefore, by no stretch, a hospital can treat a doctor like a workman in a factory or a technical person or a regular employee, the Madras high court has said.Justice N Anand Venkatesh made the observation while dismissing an arbitration plea moved by MIOT Hospital, Chennai, against Dr Balaraman Palaniappan, a cardio thoracic surgeon. The court also imposed Rs 1 lakh cost on the hospital payable to the doctor. MIOT moved the arbitration proceeding claiming breach of a professional contract by the doctor and joining another private hospital, its competitor in the city in violation of confidentiality, non-solicitation and non-compete covenants in the contract.The court dismissed the plea since it came to light that the doctor had terminated the agreement after giving due notice as agreed under the contract. “An agreement made with a doctor by a hospital, which contains a non-solicitation and non-compete clause, is certainly opposed to public policy and such an agreement must be held to be unlawful, unenforceable and void ab initio to that extent,” the court said.“It is quite unfortunate that a hospital has incorporated such a clause in an agreement with a doctor. Either it is as a result of cut, copy and paste syndrome from an agreement, which is regularly entered into between technology companies with their employees or the petitioner hospital has forgotten the fact that they are running a hospital to serve the patients and that they are indirectly admitting that the organization is nothing short of a profit making entity like any other business entity,” the court said.“This court is constrained to make such a strong observation considering the attitude shown by the hospital towards doctors. Doctors are qualified and competent to discharge their duties to patients. Hospitals do not give them any special training nor equip them. On the other hand, it is the hospitals which utilize the services of doctors to effectively run the operations,” the judge said.“A doctor is an independent professional, who cannot be stopped from rendering their services wherever they want to and cannot be stopped from attending to patients just because those patients were earlier taking treatment in the petitioner hospital,” the court added.
