Draft members of the medical staff and force the physicians to provide ED backup services as a condition of medical staff membership.

Advantages

• There is no cost to the hospital for physician services or administration of the program.
• There is no special treatment for any specialty. This solution is equally fair or unfair to all members of the medical staff.

Disadvantages

• Physicians may resign from the medical staff in large numbers.
• Physicians may avoid emergency patients by declaring that the patient's presenting problem is not related to their specialty. The patient then becomes a "hot potato" and is bounced from one specialist to another.
• The medical staff generally becomes bitterly unhappy about being drafted to provide services and medical staff morale plummets.