PEER REVIEW PRIVILEGE

Dodson v. DeLeo, No. 897 MDA 2004 (Pa. Super. Ct. Apr. 18, 2005)

A patient filed suit against a physician, claiming the physician's performance of a vertical banded gastroplasty and subsequent post-operative care fell below the standard of care for a reasonable physician. The patient requested documents from the physician's peer review file regarding the physician's past performance. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania held that the documents were protected under the state's Peer Review Protection Act because they were both generated and used exclusively by the hospital's peer review department. The fact that some of the information contained within the documents may be available from other sources did not change the result.