W. Va. ex rel. Wheeling Hosp., Inc. v. Wilson — Feb. 2016 (Summary)

PEER REVIEW PRIVILEGE

W. Va. ex rel. Wheeling Hosp., Inc. v. Wilson
No. 15-0558 (W. Va. Feb. 9, 2016)

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia granted a writ of prohibition to preclude the enforcement of a discovery order issued by a lower court in a medical malpractice and negligent credentialing suit by a patient who suffered bilateral vocal cord paralysis after experiencing complications from a thyroidectomy.  During discovery, the patient requested access to her doctor’s application materials for the renewal of his staff privileges. The lower court granted this request, reasoning that the documents fell under the “original source” exception to the peer review privilege because they “were not created solely for the hospital’s [credentialing] committee but are otherwise available from original sources extraneous to that committee.”

The Supreme Court of Appeals disagreed with the lower court, stating that the requested records were created specifically for and exclusively used by a peer review committee, and therefore shielded by the peer review statute. The court also reasoned that peer review protection does not stem from a document being reviewed by a peer review committee. (Notably, the Illinois Supreme Court recently reached the opposite conclusion, in Klaine v. S. Ill. Hosp. Servs., No. 118217 (Ill. Jan. 22, 2016) with respect to the discoverability of documents considered by credentials committees.)