Error-reporting confidentiality threatened in court

A case before the Supreme Court of Iowa holds the confidentiality of peer-review materials in the balance. Will the court uphold an Iowa statute meant to maintain confidentiality of such documents in order to reduce error leading to morbidity and mortality and improve public health?What happened in Iowa
At stake inWillard v. State of Iowa is whether the Iowa Morbidity and Mortality Study Law (MMSL), a type of peer-review statute meant to keep peer-review information and materials confidential, created a privilege against legal discovery of a hospital ’s patient safety network incident report (PSN) and related documents.
Dennis Willard was injured in a motorcycle accident and taken to a hospital in Davenport, Iowa, for treatment. Because of the seriousness of his injuries, Willard was transferred to the University of Iowa Hospital —an agency of the State of Iowa. Willard was under heavy sedation at the time of the transfer and sued the State of Iowa alleging he was handled negligently during the transfer process and suffered further injuries as a result.
During discovery, Willard sought production of various documents pertaining to his care, including the hospital ’s incident report. The hospital objected to the discovery, claiming the requested documents were privileged under MMSL.
After hearing testimony from the hospital regarding the nature of the contested documents and ordering anin camera review — review of the hospital’s documents by the judge without the...

Source: AMA Wire - October 12, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Timothy Smith Source Type: news