Can a physician schedule elective surgery while being on-call?
7.A: Except in the case of Critical Access Hospitals (see 42 CFR 413.70), CMS has not issued any rule or interpretative guidelines that prohibit a physician from performing surgery while on-call. A hospital may have such a policy to prohibit elective surgery by on-call physicians to better serve the needs of its patients seeking treatment for a potential emergency medical condition; CMS recognizes that hospitals need to have flexibility in developing a method of providing coverage for such patients. Nevertheless, we would expect that if a physician has agreed to be on-call at a particular hospital during a particular period of time, but has also scheduled elective surgery during that time, that physician would have a planned back-up in the event that they are called while performing elective surgery. We anticipate that surveyors would recognize that physicians and hospitals need flexibility in developing a back-up plan that the back-up plan needs to be developed in the best interests o
