This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Douglas Beall, MD

JAMA. 1998;280:192.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have enacted peer review statutes that provide varying degrees of immunity to those participating in medical peer review activities. These statutes state that the proceedings, findings, and records of peer review committees are protected from discovery and are normally inadmissible as evidence in judicial or administrative proceedings. The fundamental reason for preserving the confidentiality of these proceedings is to ensure a high quality of peer review activity leading to high-quality patient care. Unfortunately, residents' performance evaluations and related documents are not always similarly protected. These documents can only be adequately protected if they are specifically mentioned in a state's statute governing peer review protections.

This lack of protection was proved in a recent medical liability case in Illinois (Thomas v Northwestern Memorial Hospital; No 94, L 7842). In this case a patient claimed that a resident physician and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Baltimore, Md

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?