There’s no doubt that Dr. Roy L. Schneider has helped the community, but giving him uninterrupted privileges and credentials at the territory’s hospitals goes against federal regulations that govern the health care of these facilities, their medical code of ethics and patient safety guidelines, Gov. John deJongh Jr. wrote Wednesday.
A bill to that effect passed through the Senate during last month’s full session — going straight to the full body as a resolution without stopping at the Senate’s Health Committee. Since then, the bill’s language has caused an uproar within the medical community, with local hospital officials urging deJongh to veto it before it costs the St. Thomas hospital its accreditation.
A number of local doctors have explained that the bill bypasses the kind of internal regulations that are specifically set up to keep the hospital’s practitioners in check — namely, putting them through a peer review process every two years that is designed to take a holistic look at a doctor’s practice, from the type of surgeries being performed to how well their medical records are kept.
Doctors are also required to meet certain standards for continuing education, a must, many said, when it comes to dealing with new forms of surgery and technology. To exempt Schneider — or any doctor — from those requirements would set a dangerous precedent for others to follow and expose the hospital to sanctions from their accrediting body, the doctors have said.
An internal review, however, can be triggered before the two-year mark, and the Source recently reported that Schneider, according to informed hospital sources, was already the subject of an investigation that had started before the Senate’s bill was passed.
In a lengthy interview with the Source, bill sponsor Celestino A. White Sr. said recently he was unaware of any controversy surrounding Schneider and had received no letters of concern from hospital staff when a similar resolution was passed by senators during a session in late December.
Generally, a resolution does not go through the Senate’s committee process — instead, it is sent straight to the floor for a vote. It also does not require action from the governor, who generally "acknowledges receipt" of the document once it’s sent to his office. And that’s exactly what happened the first time around, White explained.
But the insertion of an enactment clause in the second bill is what stirred the controversy. For White, the enactment clause simply puts in some language he said was left out of the first document — language that was legally binding and had the "full force of law" when it came to granting Schneider’s privileges and credentials.
Government House, however, has said the document was sent up as a bill — one that deJongh vetoed Wednesday, saying that it could cost both of the territory’s hospitals their accreditation. And if the accreditation is in jeopardy, so is all of the government’s funding for local Medicaid recipients, the governor wrote in a letter sent to Senate President Louis P. Hill along with the vetoed bill.
"Since the passage of this bill…I have received correspondence from the medical directors of both the Schneider Regional Medical Center and the Gov. Juan F. Luis Medical Center, as well as the interim chief operating officers and medical staff presidents of both institutions, expressing great dismay that this bill passed through the Senate without a committee hearing, given its far-reaching implications," he said.
DeJongh noted that the first resolution passed by the Senate in December contained pretty much the same language, but instead of mandating unlimited privileges, simply says that the Legislature thinks Schneider deserves fair treatment when it comes to credentialing and privileging decisions.
"However, for reasons unknown, the Legislature now seeks to codify conditions that would risk an entire community," deJongh added in his letter to Hill. "I hereby veto this legislation, which represents unconstitutional special legislation that applies to one person to the detriment of a whole community."
Most senators have said they will most likely hold off on voting for an override of the governor’s veto on the bill if it comes up for a vote during an upcoming session.
