Earlier this month, Arent Fox Health Care partners Lowell C. Brown and Jonathan E. Phillips published an article in California Healthcare News that provides insight into a key peer review case involving legal principles and individual behaviors that provide critical lessons for hospitals.
In the article, Mr. Brown and Mr. Phillips report that "Michalski was about sexual harassment, an errant hearing committee decision, and a governing body's ultimate authority to decide what physician behavior is acceptable in the hospital. In its decision the California Court of Appeal confirmed that a hospital's governing body may, where permitted by the hospital's medical staff bylaws, broadly exercise its independent judgment and overturn a Judicial Review Committee (JRC) decision following a peer review hearing."
As a result of the decision, the authors argue that the case "demonstrates the wisdom of including in medical staff bylaws the right provisions regarding the standard of review the hospital board must apply when conducting an appellate review of a JRC decision. The board bears ultimate responsibility for the decision and in some rare cases must correct a JRC decision that does not adequately protect patients."
To read the article, click here.
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