Los Angeles County Board Seeks Hospital’s Peer Review Records
In a request that could have widespread implications, the Los Angeles Times reports that L.A. County supervisors are seeking doctors’ peer review documents from Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. After receiving an anonymous letter that peer review of the practices at the neo-natal ICU was absent, the county requested access to two years of documents. The county claims access to these documents is necessary in order identify potential patient safety problems and better inform the board’s decision-making process regarding medical malpractice claims.
Allowing the supervisors access to the peer review process could be the first step in determining where and how errors occurred and preventing these errors from happening in the future. Patients would be better served by allowing oversight of the peer review process. As stated by Supervisor Molina, she has learned from the closing of other area hospitals not to trust medical staff to police themselves.
The county’s request comes after several significant settlements of medical malpractice claims based on actions that occurred at Olive View, including post-operative infections, failures to diagnose, and delays in delivery.
Changes in procedures often are not made until it’s too late – after medical errors are made and injuries result. While maintaining confidentiality and providing physicians a forum to discuss errors is critical – oversight that this process is actually occurring and that steps are being taken to ensure the same errors don’t occur again is necessary.
For more information, or if you believe you have suffered a injury as the result of medical malpractice, contact Bostwick, Peterson & Mitchell, LLP, dedicated to helping the victims of negligence.
