Protecting Peer Review Information
Audio CD/MP3
Recorded February
7, 2008
Faculty: Susan
Lapenta & Phil
Zarone
Has the following scenario made the rounds at
your medical staff lounge? A medical staff peer review committee
conducts a thorough evaluation of a popular colleague. The committee
concludes that his care is substandard and makes the difficult
decision to recommend that his privileges be restricted. Months
later, some of the documents prepared by the peer review committee
are obtained by a malpractice attorney and are used at trial. Members
of the peer review committee are aghast, feeling that they have
contributed to the downfall of a colleague. Physicians resign from
the committee en masse, and many members of the medical staff vow
never to do peer review again.
Even if this hasn't happened at
your hospital, the risk of such scenarios is what keeps many
physicians from engaging in the candid discussions and evaluations
that are critical for good peer review. Fortunately, there are
a variety of steps hospitals can take - from the mundane to the
creative - to ensure that peer review information is used for its
intended purpose of improving patient care.
Topics discussed in this audio CD/MP3 include:
- the basics of the peer review privilege – what
is privileged and who is immune?
- how do you maximize the effectiveness of your state's statutory
peer review privilege?
- what steps need to be documented during
the peer review process?
- how much detail is needed in meeting
minutes and other documentation?
- how do you avoid waiving the
peer review privilege or other applicable privileges?
- what
happens when the State Board wants your peer review documents?
- how
long must peer review documentation be retained?
- can you protect
your peer review documents in antitrust, EMTALA, and civil
rights cases?
- what are the uses - and limitations - of the
attorney-client privilege and attorney work-product doctrine
in protecting peer review information?
- obtaining a protective
order to limit the uses of any peer review information that
is disclosed
- does the federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement
Act of 2005 offer any hope for peer reviewers?
Audio CD or MP3 only: $225
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