Conflict Avoidance During Re-Credentialing
Two pathologists, Dr. Joab Smith and Dr. Edri Wesson, work at the same hospital in a large South central city. The two are personal and professional rivals. One often challenged the other’s pathology results. Their conflict was well known, because the two often expressed their disagreements loudly and vociferously in front of other staff members. Twice since Wesson’s hiring, Smith threatened to send her cases to the peer review committee to prove her incompetence.
When Dr. Wesson came up for her first recredentialing at the hospital, Dr. Smith had already communicated to the medical staff and the hospital quality manager his lack of confidence in Wesson’s ability and claimed his review of her work and credentials would bear this out.
The prejudicial talk had the hospital credentialing committee worried about the appropriateness of Dr. Smith providing an opinion on Dr. Wesson’s performance. Its members were nervous that regardless of the medical evidence, his personal feelings could override any objectivity that Dr. Smith might bring to the evaluation. To avoid a potentially volatile conflict of interest, the committee sent Dr. Wesson’s cases out for an external peer review by another pathologist instead.
Based on the external review of her cases, AllMed’s peer reviewer concluded that Dr. Wesson’s work, credentials and clinical decisions were in line with current literature and met the standards of the American College of Pathology.
This case serves as an example of how re-credentialing specialist practitioners can trigger the need for external peer review in order to avoid conflicts and ensure objectivity. With The Joint Commission’s 2007 standards related to Focused & Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluations, the need for external peer review in these kinds of situations is critical to performing re-credentialing tasks.