The story of Michael Swango, the physician currently serving a life prison sentence for poisoning his patients and colleagues, motivated numerous medical executive committees to conduct background investigations on all medical staff applicants. Such practices allow medical staffs to identify...
Credentialing Resource Center Journal - Volume 31, Issue 2
The Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department (the "Court") recently ruled that parts of a hospital peer review committee's meeting minutes were not entitled to the state's quality assurance privilege. Due to an exception in that privilege,...
Short of terminating a physician’s employment, appraising a physician’s performance is often the responsibility that administrative and medical staff leaders hate most. For many physicians, the phrase “performance appraisals” stirs up an unsavory image of managers sitting behind large desks...
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit involving Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), the teaching hospital of the Yale School of Medicine, and aging physicians remains an ongoing legal matter. The EEOC charged in the February 2020 lawsuit that the hospital violated federal...
Credentialing Resource Center Journal - Volume 30, Issue 11
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (the "Court") vacated a pair of lower court rulings, finding that documents in a physician's credentialing file and from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) were protected from disclosure in a lawsuit claiming corporate negligence against a hospital....
The primary question a physician reviewer is trying to answer is whether a physician’s actions and decisions were appropriate independent of the care outcome. One of the main components of reviewing performance is identifying the key issues of the case. Physicians reviewers should ask themselves...
