Removing Conflicts of Interest in Hospital Peer Reviews
In terms of satisfactory outcomes, it´s widely known that medical peer review inside hospitals and medical groups is at best complex and at worst conflictive. Internal hospital peer review is an inherently broken system that often leads to conflicts of interest among the doctors working there. As a result, internal hospital peer reviews often aren´t completed—or worse, swept under the rug.
Part of the problem is that most hospitals don´t have the depth of specialist medical knowledge to conduct effective peer reviews. Often, the doctors on a peer review panel have conflicts of interest because of colleague relationships. For example, they may be friends with another physician; or, they may compete economically; or, they could even be involved in a nonmedical legal action with another doctor, like a custody or property lawsuit.
Given these conditions, it can be difficult for hospital colleagues to make decisions based solely on the medical facts involved in the case without invoking their personal situations or opinions. This makes conflict of interest one of the most difficult issues to overcome when conducting peer reviews among colleagues working together in a hospital. Most risk and quality managers in hospitals understand this issue and an increasing number of them are turning to independent review organizations (IROs) to gain unbiased hospital peer reviews and establish a best management practice.
Outsourcing to a third-party IRO immediately removes any conflict of interest for a hospital and speeds up case resolution. A good reputable independent review organization can offer a panel of specialists in all specialty and sub-specialty areas, as well as a group of actively practicing, board-certified and licensed doctors. The IRO can quickly match a specific peer review case with a specialty or sub-specialty from its panel and assure the hospital that the specialist conducting the case review does not have conflict of interest.
Often IRO physician panels have specialists from around the country so it´s easy to select one from a different state where there is little possibility of a conflict. In addition, all cases are handled anonymously. As a result, a peer specialist on an IRO panel is able to preserve anonymity -- and a high-level of objectivity -- when reviewing a doctor´s case. Many of the hospitals that initially contact AllMed are in delicate situations. Sometimes they have already been involved in litigation for a bad outcome related to a doctor´s misdiagnosis or treatment.
Hospitals that want to increase their care quality, improve patient safety and manage sentinel events or negative outcomes can do that quickly and efficiently by outsourcing hospital peer reviews to IROs. AllMed has dozens of clients, including hospitals from some of largest medical groups in the United States, that are outsourcing hospital peer reviews as a best practice to remove any possibility of conflict of interest.