Protection for Peer Review under PSQIA: Inside and Outside the "Reporting Pathway"

December 6, 2017 | Strategic Insights for Health System

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Federal peer review protections available for patient safety work product (PSWP) are explored in two recent articles from MedStaff News, the newsletter of the American Health Lawyers Association's Medical Staff, Credentialing, and Peer Review practice group (available to members). The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA) protections for PSWP, including peer review documents, to minimize barriers to total systems analysis of PSWP and to encourage quality efforts involving providers in integrated systems across multiple entities, often across state lines. Thus the federal protections available under PSQIA are stronger than most state- or local-level protections, explain the authors of "Should Hospitals Be Performing Root Cause Analysis under the Federal Peer Review Privilege?" PSQIA provides fairly wide latitude for what materials can be considered PSWP, including root-cause analyses (RCAs) or other materials reflecting the deliberations involved in such analyses. As long as such materials are generated in the "AD pathway" (analyses and deliberations)

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