The Center For Peer Review Justice, Inc.
 

The Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 was developed as a tool for permitting physicians to improve the quality of their healthcare services and that of the hospital since it was believed that they had the best means for improving among themselves. The idea of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act is credible in that the goal is to ultimately maximize patient care by forcing physicians to critique themselves in the spirit of academic excellence. Unfortunately over time, there has been an abuse of this law by specific hospitals and institutions as well as by physicians who are utilizing some of the good elements of the law or their own personal gain. The Center for Peer Review Justice, Inc is in favor of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act ( HCQIA ) as well as peer review which is a form of dialogue which is intended for doctors to help one another deliver better health care to the public. The objectives of the Center are as follows:

OBJECTIVE

1. To inform the public and other health care professionals at large regarding the intent of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act and its current potential misuses with regards to overall patient care.
2. Stop bogus review of one physician by others who are compelled to find fault because of anticompetitive motives.
3. Provide advocacy to physicians and patients who are being victimized by sham peer review.
4. Eliminate sham peer review that damage excellent doctors and does great disservice to our honored profession and to the patients who put their trust in us.
5. To support changes in hospital bylaws and to rotate committee members, thereby lessening the chance of politicizing their positions on these hospital committees.
6. To support changes in hospital to equalize the playing field by placing "burden of proof" on the hospital attempting to remove a physician except in cases of drug and alcohol abuse.
7. To attempt to make "peer review" a process which cannot be used for political means or purposes.
8. To remove immunity from those physicians and administrators who attempt to maliciously injure a physician in a peer review hearing.
9. To force hospitals to accept physicians who have been rejected by their peer review committees if they are exonerated by the State.
10. To require external peer review critique regarding any ad hoc committee meetings and/or questionable summary suspension of a physician except those with obvious drug or alcohol problems.
11. To modify hospital bylaws to give the final say of a peer review hearing to the hearing panel and not back to the hospital administrator or the trustees, or medical executive committee.
12. To allow all "privileged information" be submitted and reviewed by the hearing panel at the time of any peer review hearing.
13. The individual state licensing boards should be the only authorized body to submit physician names to the National Practitioner's Data Bank.
14. The State licensing boards should require a hospital to remove any adverse decisions from the National Practitioner's Data Bank if the physician is exonerated by their state medical board.

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