Court Opinion

ID: 9526507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:19:06.4714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:21.398342
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the majority but because of Pepple's assertion that IC 84-4-12.6-2 was voided sub silencio by the First District's decision in Terre Haute Regional Hospital v. EL-Issa (1984), Ind.App., 470 N.E.2d 1371 some amplification may be helpful.
The law generally recognizes that the fourteenth amendment's requirements of due process are not applicable to the decisions of private hospitals, such as Park-view, in granting and removing staff privileges of physicians. Kiracofe v. Reid Memorial Hospital (1984), Ind.App., 461 N.E.2d 1134.
Thus, the general rule is that a private hospital's decision to admit or remove a physician from staff is not, itself, subject to judicial review. Kiracofe, supra; Yarnell v. Sisters of St. Francis Health Service (1983), Ind.App., 446 N.E.2d 359.
On the other hand, the by-laws of the hospital may create contract rights between the hospital and its staff, EL-Issa, 470 N.E.2d at 1377, and may entitle a physician whose staff privileges have been reduced or removed to limited judicial review necessary to insure that in such instances the hospital has followed the necessary prescribed procedures. EL-Issa, supra; Yarnell, supra.
In this context Pepple's argument that the Indiana Peer Review Act should have application only in claims asserting medical malpractice misses the mark. Since the basic decision to remove certain staff privileges is insulated from judicial review, it follows that what was reported about him and by whom would ordinarily be irrelevant to the review to which he is entitled and such evidence would therefore be properly excludible on that ground.
We need not consider at this juncture whether some specific bit of evidence necessary to the judicial review to which Pep-ple is entitled is arguably in conflict with the privilege the statute appears to accord. Motions in limine and the orders entered thereon are not final adjudications of ad*471missibility. See Inman v. State (1979), 271 Ind. 491, 393 N.E.2d 767.
I agree that the opinion in EL-Issa certainly appears to consider matters excludible from evidence under the Peer Review Statute. Arguably, so do the decisions in Kiracofe and Yarnell,. However, none of these decisions make any reference to the act or the privilege it accords. By its own terms the act permits waiver of the privilege by the committee. IC 84-4-12.6-2(c).
Since there is no mention whatever of the act in these cases, I believe we may only presume that a proper waiver was effected in the trial court, or that for other reasons consideration was waived on appeal. In either case, they constitute no binding precedent upon this appeal.
I concur.