Court Opinion

ID: 9727447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:37:51.657822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:38.057959
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WELCH, dissenting: I agree with the majority opinion that material or information generated prior to Dr. Marrese’s application for staff privileges is not privileged under the Act even if considered by the executive committee in determining whether to grant Dr. Marrese’s application for staff privileges. As the majority correctly points out, the mere fact that the committee considers such material does not make that otherwise nonprivileged material privileged. However, I disagree with the majority’s apparent conclusion that even new material and information generated by the executive committee after Dr. Marrese’s application for staff privileges, but before the granting of that application, is not privileged. In my opinion, information or material generated by the executive committee is privileged under the Act if it is generated and used by that committee in determining whether to grant staff privileges. The majority seems to conclude, as did the trial court, that any material or information generated prior to the granting of staff privileges, no matter how or by whom generated, and even if generated after the application for privileges has been filed and by the executive committee in the process of determining whether or not to grant that application for privileges, cannot be privileged because the Act only applies after the granting of staff privileges. I simply cannot construe the Act this way. It is my opinion that the legislature intended to afford confidentiality to the hospital’s internal review process in the granting or denying of staff privileges when it specifically provided in section 8 — 2101 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1991, ch. 110, par. 8 — 2101) that the confidential committee information, interviews, reports, statements, memoranda, or other data shall be used only for, inter alia, the granting of staff privileges. This interpretation is in keeping with the rules of statutory construction that this court is bound to give meaning and effect to all of the provisions of a statute and that the court must construe a statute so that no word, clause, or sentence, to the extent that it is possible to do so, is rendered superfluous or meaningless and that the court, if possible, is required to give each word, clause, or sentence some reasonable meaning. (Walker v. Alton Memorial Hospital Association (1980), 91 Ill. App. 3d 310, 313, 414 N.E.2d 850, 852.) Any other construction of the Act would render superfluous and without reasonable meaning the reference therein to the granting of staff privileges. It is my further opinion that the internal review process of the hospital’s executive committee which transpires before it renders a decision on the granting of staff privileges can be as much a part of hospital quality control, in attempting to assure that staff privileges are only accorded to competent physicians, as the internal review process of a doctor’s performance which transpires after the granting of staff privileges. Accordingly, I would have reversed the order of the trial court, which established a bright-line rule that any material or information generated prior to the granting of staff privileges is not privileged under the Act, no matter how or by whom generated. I would have remanded this cause to the trial court for its determination as to what material and information was generated by the executive committee in the process of evaluating Dr. Marrese’s application for staff privileges. Any such material and information is, in my opinion, privileged under the Act even if generated prior to the granting of staff privileges. See Roach v. Springfield Clinic (1993), 157 Ill. 2d 29, 623 N.E.2d 246.