Rasor v. Nw. Hosp., LLC — May 2016 (Summary)

PATIENT SAFETY ORGANIZATIONS — PRIVILEGE

Rasor v. Nw. Hosp., LLC
No. 2 CA-CV 2015-0065 (Ariz. Ct. App. May 17, 2016)

The Court of Appeals of Arizona affirmed a trial court’s decision in a malpractice action to allow discovery regarding other patients who suffered similar injuries to the plaintiff patient in order to establish a habitual hospital practice and procedure. The court held that the information regarding other patients with similar injuries was not privileged under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act even though the hospital may have to access patient safety work product to identify the requested information because the information that was actually being sought – patient medical records – was exempt from protection under the Act.

The patient sued the hospital after she developed a significant pressure ulcer following a prolonged hospital stay for open heart surgery, claiming that her ICU nurses had breached the standard of care by failing to reposition her during her stay.  In discovery, among other things, the patient had requested records of all patients who had developed pressure ulcers in the ICU, a request that the hospital claimed was overbroad, would violate HIPAA, and was privileged under statutes. While the trial court did narrow the discovery requests, it ordered the hospital to provide the requested records for a four-year period prior to the patient’s hospital admission.  On appeal, the hospital claimed that the request for patient records was barred by the Patient Safety Act.  The appellate court disagreed, holding that the requested patient records were not protected by the Patient Safety Act as they were not specifically created for safety or quality control purposes but, rather, were created to diagnose and treat medical conditions, and that even if identifying the relevant records required accessing patient safety work product through the PSO, it wouldn’t violate the act, because the information sought was exempt from protection.