Charles v. S. Baptist Hosp. of Fla., Inc. — Jan. 2017 (Summary)

PSQIA – PATIENT SAFETY ORGANIZATIONS

Charles v. S. Baptist Hosp. of Fla., Inc.
No. SC15-2180 (Fla. Jan. 31, 2017)

The Florida Supreme Court reversed the state appeals court and held that, in the absence of a state law protecting certain documents from discovery, a hospital cannot claim privilege over records relating to adverse medical incidents (“Amendment 7” records) by declaring them to be patient safety work product and submitting them through a voluntary reporting system established pursuant to the Federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (“PSQIA”).

Through Amendment 7, the Florida constitution gives patients a right to access documents related to adverse medical incidents that are created or received by health care facilities and providers.  According to the Florida Supreme Court, the PSQIA creates a voluntary, confidential system for health care providers to share data about errors, with the aim of improving health care delivery.  In this case, pursuant to the PSQIA, the hospital established a patient safety evaluation system for purposes of reporting “events that are not consistent with the routine operations of the hospital or the routine care of a patient or that could result in an injury.”

The confidentiality of those records came into dispute after the hospital was sued for malpractice.  During discovery, the plaintiff requested documents related to adverse medical incidents at the hospital and related to any physician who worked at the hospital.  The hospital claimed that many documents that would be responsive, because they were adverse incident reports, were privileged under the PSQIA as “patient safety work product.”

The Supreme Court of Florida reversed the lower court and held that insomuch as state law required health care providers to compile data on adverse medical incidents, patients had a right to access this data through the Florida constitution and the PSQIA did not abridge this right.  Because Florida law required providers to create and maintain adverse medical incident reports for patients to access, the adverse medical data collected by the hospital was exempted from the PSQIA because it “exists separately[ ] from a patient safety evaluation system.”  The court further held that the hospital’s choice to place the data in a safety evaluation system did not, alone, transform the data into patient safety work product.

The court also held that the PSQIA did not preempt Amendment 7.  Accordingly, the court ruled that the hospital could not claim privilege over the documents.