Hey folks, Scott Wingard here, and this is an M-Crit-Wee. Now, if you've been under a rock and live in the

United States, then you might not have heard that there was an enormous battle against corporate

medicine happening in Oregon. What happened was Peace Health, a system of hospitals, had contracted

for years and years with a group called the Eugene

emergency physicians. They were part of the community. They staffed the EDs. Everyone in the

hospital was happy with these docs. One of the hospitals closed and therefore wait times

went up at the remaining EDs through no fault of these physicians. And that was used as pretext to go shopping for a corporate group to take over this contract.

For no reason, no failure of these doctors, they were beloved in their hospitals.

And they found a group called Apollo MD, which was a Georgia-based physician staffing and

management company. And this was going through. These ED docs would either lose their

democratic practice or have to now work for this corporate group through no failure in their

care. And they, and luckily, Oregon has very good laws against

corporate medicine, much better than most of the states out there. They decided to fight this,

and they fought it in court. And despite much chicanery on the part of the corporate medicine group

and really egregious things going on, they pushed it in court, and it was pretty obvious to

any outside observer that they would have won in court, and as a result, Apollo MD's Health

decided to capitulate so as to not set precedent

and not be at the whims of the court for determining what took place. And they made a

agreement with the Eugene emergency physicians. And now these docs who really put their livelihoods

on the line to fight this as a group, and they should be

commended for their really amazing precedent they said here in fighting corporate medicine,

they're now keeping their jobs, keeping their practice in their communities in the

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