Court Opinion

ID: 9795560
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:31:30.919387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:30:18.023052
License: Public Domain

*330Shearing, J.,
with whom Rose, J., agrees, concurring:
I must concur in the result reached in the majority opinion because HCQIA sets such a low threshold for granting immunity to a hospital’s so-called peer review. Basically, as long as the hospitals provide procedural due process and state some minimal basis related to quality health care, whether legitimate or not, they are immune from liability. Unfortunately, this may leave the hospitals and review board members free to abuse the process for their own purposes without regard to quality medical care. This is particularly probable since most courts have indicated that the legislative history of HCQIA bars consideration of the subjective motives or biases of peer review boards.
Here, hospital administrators, immediately upon recognizing a public relations problem, decided that Dr. Meyer was to be the hospital’s scapegoat for the unfortunate death of a patient. The testimony showed that the administrators decided to fire her long before any so-called peer review. The real opinion of her ability is made clear by the fact that they allowed her to continue to take care of patients and finish her shift because they were not “that concerned about her quality as a physician,” because she had worked for them for two years without any problems.
Unfortunately, the immunity provisions of HCQIA sometimes can be used, not to improve the quality of medical care, but to leave a doctor who is unfairly treated without any viable remedy.