Sham Peer Review Issue Goes Mainstream. WaPo: VA Physicians Fear Sham Peer Review

The paper's words this time, not mine:

From the Washington Post, "VA docs concerned about retaliation", June 12, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/06/12/va-docs-concerned-about-retaliation/:

Retaliation from management is a real concern among Department of Veteran Affairs (VA)  employees ...  James Martin, a physician and a representative of the American Federation of Government Employees National VA Council, told the gathering  that sham peer reviews are a problem in the department. In a later interview, he elaborated, saying, “orchestration of facts” related to issues involving contact with patients [in other words, fabricating stories about substandard patient treatment by physicians, cherry-picking minor incidents and exaggerating them, etc. - ed.] is an issue at some facilities.” Sham reviews, he explained, can be used when management wants to replace or punish a doctor.

Retaliation against employee whistleblowers was again the subject of discussion during Thursday’s hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Further amplifying the point:

... During the hearing, Republicans Jeff Miller (Fla.) and Dan Benishek (Mich.), both of whom spoke to the NAVAPD conference, asked Robert L. Jesse, the department’s acting under secretary for health, about reports that VA employees were instructed not to talk with members of Congress.

Benishek, a physician and former VA employee, said agency doctors have told him they are “reprimanded and have this retribution if they try to change the system.”

Read the whole article at the link above.

Then, read more on sham peer review at the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) resource site at http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/article/sham_peer_review_resources_physicians/.

A typical scenario is described like this:

A conscientious doctor reports a quality care problem or patient safety problem to the hospital administration. This might be anything from an anesthesiologist falling asleep during surgery to a malfunctioning piece of equipment which places patients at risk for harm.

Instead of fixing the problem, some hospitals misuse the peer review process to attack and silence the physician whistleblower.

The hospital administration and unethical physician collaborators then search for some pretext upon which to attack the physician whistleblower. This might involve the hospital bringing trumped up charges against the physician or it might involve bringing totally false and/or fabricated charges against the physician. The truth and the facts do not matter in a sham peer review in the hospital since the hospital controls the entire process.

The hospital then goes through the motions of providing a hearing to the accused physician, which they call “fair,” yet the outcome of the hearing is predetermined. The physician’s due process rights are often utterly trampled. At the conclusion of the process, the physician’s privileges to practice at the hospital are terminated. The physician is reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank, and the physician’s career is essentially over. Once a physician receives a negative report in the National Practitioner Data Bank, it is unlikely that physician will ever work in any hospital again anywhere in the nation.

Sham peer view affects all physicians, not just public-sector ones.

It does not help patients when physicians, their supposed advocates, are cowering in fear over destruction of their careers for being "whistleblowers" (for which a better term might be "corporate integrity agents").

Finally, I think this fear helps explain the relatively low levels of complaints about bad health IT, on which hospital executives invest billions of dollars and their reputations.

-- SS