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The federal Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) provides a privilege from civil liability for hospitals and medical staff members involved in the peer review process. Peer Review Privilege Difficult to Overcome for a Physician Plaintiff. Additionally, the jury also found Memorial acted with malice by making false statements about the surgical competence of Dr. The jury also found that another employee’s comment about Memorial’s decision to share Gomez’s peer review data with referring cardiologists was false and defamatory. The jury determined that a comment from a Memorial employee about Gomez’s “bad quality, high mortality rates, unnecessary surgeries,” was false and damaged Gomez’s reputation. Gomez, who perform procedures with high profit margins and who bring in a large amount of income to the hospital.įor more information on the importance of the peer review process, click here to visit our web page. Hospitals fight hard to hold onto specialists like Dr. It highlighted the fierce battle among hospitals for market share and the lengths to which they may go to protect their territory. This case may help open the eyes of the public and the courts to the many cases in which this happens. Gomez alleged that Memorial completely misused the peer review process, manipulating data on the outcome of his surgeries to suggest that his patients were more likely to die than those of other surgeons. Traditionally, it had been used solely to protect patients from physicians whose medical skills are not what they should be or who have a number of adverse outcomes.
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Gomez’s case involved peer review, a confidential process conducted by committees of physicians to detect and discipline physicians whose quality of care is not up to par. Gomez sued Memorial in 2012, contending the hospital launched a “whisper campaign” to smear his reputation to keep patients from following him to his new location.ĭr. He claimed that the peer review was not about the quality of health care, but was to retaliate against him for moving his lucrative practice to a competing hospital.ĭr. The suit arose out of a peer review proceeding against Dr. On March 29, 2017, a Houston heart surgeon was awarded $6.4 million in damages after a jury found that Memorial Hermann Health System (Memorial) defamed his reputation. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law