ANNAPOLIS -- Doctors would be prohibited from referring patients to clinics or laboratories in which the physician has an interest under a bill passed by a House committee yesterday.
"If this bill flies, this is going to be one that the rest of the country follows. I really believe that," said Kent County Del. Ronald A. Guns, the chairman of the Environmental Matters Committee that passed House Bill 1374 yesterday.
The bill would prohibit health-care practitioners from referring patients to outside facilities in which the practitioners, or family members, have a financial interest.
One group decidedly unhappy about the outcome is a Georgia radiology company that, according to both supporters and opponents, became a primary target of the bill.
"I think it's absolutely outrageous," said Dennis McCoy, lobbyist for Atlanta-based Radiation Care Inc., which operates a College Park radiology clinic and is building another in Rockville.
Officials from Radiation Care, or RCI, said they are the main reason the state physicians' society reversed its long-standing opposition to the "physician self-referral" bill.
RCI typically finds a group of local physicians to invest in a radiology facility and ultimately buys them out with RCI stock.
Local physicians and lawmakers are concerned that the arrival of RCI will increase health-care costs as new radiology clinics pop up with a captive audience of "self-referred patients."
The Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, the state's physicians' association, denied their support for the bill is because of RCI.
