PICK ONE:YOUR DOCTOR OR YOUR RIGHTS

As private equity investors take over doctors’ offices, they’re popularizing a controversial legal practice: forcing patients to agree to binding arbitration before they can receive care

- HEATHER PERLBERG

IN the summer of 2019, Jessie Harrell went to see her gynecologist for a routine appointment. She’d been seeing Dr. Tim Baird for 14 years, ever since she showed up at the hospital in labor five weeks early. He’d been on call that morning, and she’d been reassured by his calm demeanor, even as he delivered her first child via an emergency cesarean section.

But this time, right before Harrell’s visit, a staff member in Dr. Baird’s office in Jacksonville, Fla., called and asked her to watch a video on the medical group’s website. She clicked a link and saw an attractive actress in an immaculate office explaining a new policy. All of Dr. Baird’s patients, Harrell learned, needed to sign a form agreeing to “binding arbitration,” a legal concept that meant she was waiving her right to a jury trial in the event of medical malpractice.

When she objected, the woman on the phone told her she could see Dr. Baird one more time, but she’d have to find a new practice after that. In the exam room the doctor began as he always had, by asking Harrell about her two daughters. He was apologetic about the new requirement but said it was out of his hands. His office and dozens of other locations in his medical group had been sold to Lindsay Goldberg, a New York-based private equity firm with more than 100 physician offices and surgery centers across Florida. This was the new reality, he said, whether he liked it or not.