Assessing Peer Review in the Quest for Improved Medical Services and The Implications for Education in Quality Assessment: Part IV

Three court decisions reviewing medical peer re-view conducted in hospitals were discussed at length in part III of this article. In their opinions the courts gave at least tacit approval to the procedures followed in the hospitals, and they accepted that an evidentiary basis for adverse action against the physicians was present. But not all medical peer review in hospitals resulting in adverse actions is found satisfactory when challenged in court, and the most prominent litigation in the decade of the 1980s concerning med-ical peer review, Patrick v. Burget (1), is testimony to the potential for its perversion. Part II adverted to the potential for bias or lack of objectivity in assessing physician performance. Part I mentioned the problem of bias in the context of pee