Nahas v. Shore Memorial Hosp. — Dec. 2016 (Summary)

HCQIA

Nahas v. Shore Memorial Hosp.
Docket No. A-4638-14T2 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. Dec. 7, 2016)

The New Jersey Superior Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision granting a hospital immunity under state law and the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (“HCQIA”) for its denial of renewing staff privileges for a surgeon.

After a surgeon’s release from jail and house arrest based on charges that he obstructed and misled a healthcare fraud investigation, he sought reinstatement at the hospital where he had practiced.  Over the course of more than ten years, multiple reinstatement options were recommended and/or imposed by medical staff committees and different levels of appeals were held pertaining to those different actions.  Ultimately, the physician was granted provisional privileges at the hospital for some general surgery procedures, “supervised” privileges for some vascular procedures because the medical staff found that he did not have “sufficient clinical competency,” and some privileges were ultimately denied for failure to establish the requisite training and level of current clinical competence.  The surgeon appealed the various privileging requirements arguing they were “arbitrary and capricious,” while the hospital argued that it was immune from suit on the basis of the HCQIA and state peer review statute.  Because the hospital complied with the HCQIA due process provisions in restricting the physician’s privileges in the manner in which it did, the court affirmed the hospital’s immunity from suit for the “professional review action” undertaken.  The New Jersey Superior Court of Appeals accordingly affirmed the lower court’s decision granting the hospital immunity for its professional review action that resulted in the restriction of the physician’s privileges.