UPDATE – Since this piece was originally written, the defendant in this case filed a motion for reconsideration and, in June, the Court granted that motion, ultimately reversing the previous decision regarding the sentinel event report.
Sentinel event reports to The Joint Commission (TJC) are now privileged in Pennsylvania, according to a recent decision by the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas.
The court ruled that a hospital’s sentinel event report must be produced in litigation.
Hospitals typically have been confident that TJC sentinel event reports are confidential because of the Peer Review Protection Act and the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act.
In the interest of patient safety, those laws permit hospitals to investigate adverse patient events without having to disclose the data from that process.
In Mallik v. Brink, Marion Community Hospital in Ocala, FL, refused to turn over a sentinel event report concerning an event at the center of a malpractice lawsuit.
The hospital argued that the report was protected from disclosure by the Peer Review Protection Act and MCARE.
In deciding otherwise, the court explained that a hospital’s voluntary reporting to a private organization does not constitute peer review.
As far as the law is concerned, peer review involves an internal analysis by a peer review committee, the court said, and is not related to compliance with any portion of the MCARE Act.
“It is laudable that Marian opted to transmit the sentinel event report to The Joint Commission [on Hospital Accreditation] so that the Joint Commission could conduct a root-cause analysis and communicate its findings and recommendations to Marian, but the fact remains that the sentinel event report was not prepared by The Joint Commission, nor was it authored by or presented to Marian’s own peer review committee,” the judge wrote.
“Accordingly, Marian has not met its burden of establishing that the sentinel event report is protected by the peer review privilege set forth in the PRPA.”
Sentinel event reports to The Joint Commission are not privileged in Pennsylvania, according to a recent decision by the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas.
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