After making an insulting comment to a surgery scheduler, a surgeon become the subject of a peer review investigation.
The surgeon had been called in on a Saturday morning for surgery, but when he arrived at the hospital, staff informed him that the operating room had been incorrectly booked and asked him to come back that afternoon. When the surgeon returned, the room still wasn’t ready, recounted David Beran, DO, a peer reviewer and medical director for the emergency department at the University Medical Center New Orleans, in Louisiana. After more waiting and staff uncertainty about which operating room was going to open, the surgeon became frustrated and said to the scheduler: “Any idiot could figure this out!”
During his peer review, the surgeon acknowledged that he shouldn’t have made the rude remark to the scheduler, Beran said. His exasperation stemmed from an ongoing problem ― operating rooms at the hospital were being inefficiently managed.
“The surgeon acknowledged that even though there was a systems issue at the root, that’s not justification to speak to people unprofessionally,” Beran said. “So, there was education for the surgeon, but the surgeon was also able to explain the frustration that led to that point.”
System problems are commonly encountered by peer reviewers, says Beran.
“There’s a huge gap between administration and clinical professionals when it comes to peer review,” he said. “So many times, bad situations, whether they’re clinical or behavioral, often boil down to systems issues or some inadequacy, whether it’s an EMR [electronic medical record] problem, an inefficacy, or how complicated a process is for an end user. But having a peer review situation that then leads to a system-level change that prevents that problem from happening again is really unlikely. There’s a huge disconnect between those two.”
Peer review is generally a process that goes on behind closed doors. Although structures may differ, peer review is generally described as the process by which physicians assess the quality of their peers’ work to ensure that standards of care are being met. The process is often used to evaluate issues regarding clinical care as well as behavioral complaints against physicians.
Doctors who undergo peer review frequently share their experiences, but reviewers themselves rarely speak out. For this story, Medscape Medical News spoke with several current and former peer reviewers about what really goes on during peer reviews, what frustrates them, and what they’ve learned along the way.
“Peer review processes are in place to build stronger institutions and stronger practices, and they’re supposed to be helpful,” Beran said. “But because of how opaque they are, it immediately puts physicians on the defensive, and it doesn’t always succeed in what it’s trying to do. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges.”
Biased Reviewers Taint Evaluations
A peer reviewer on and off throughout her career, Indiana family physician Lana Patch, MD, says she always strived to be fair when evaluating fellow physicians. But not every reviewer she encountered operated the same way, she says. Some were biased.
In one case, Patch peer reviewed a general surgeon who had performed a hysterectomy on a 16-year-old girl. The surgeon believed the teenager likely had an acute appendicitis, but it turned out she had a uterine pathology, Patch said. The surgeon saved the girl’s life, but the case came under review because of the patient’s age and the fact that her uterus was removed. A local obstetrician-gynecologist weighed in on the case.
“The local ob/gyn saw it as a turf battle,” recalled Patch, who is now retired after 30 years of practice in eastern Indiana. “The doctor had nothing but bad to say about the surgeon. He was a competitor.”
Because it was a small hospital, the committee sometimes had trouble finding a specialist who was qualified to give an opinion and who wasn’t in competition with the physician in question, says Patch. Eventually they found an outside pediatric gynecologist who reviewed the case and concluded that the surgeon had followed the standard of care.
Personal agendas in peer review can come from different directions, said Robert Marder, MD, the author of several books on peer review. Marder is also a consultant who assists with peer review redesign. He has worked with hundreds of medical staff leaders and is a former vice president at the Greeley Company, a consulting firm in Danvers, Massachusetts, that performs peer review redesign. Marder is president of Robert J. Marder Consulting.
“It goes both ways,” Marder said. “I’ve seen where somebody with a personal view decides to bring things to the peer review committee specifically because they want the peer review committee to have an adverse view of this person and get them off the medical staff. And I’ve seen hospitals that are uncomfortable with a certain person for whatever reason and want the peer review committee to address it, as opposed to addressing it from a human resource standpoint.”
Patch recalled a case in which reviewers and hospital leaders were at odds over the credentialing of a physician. Fifteen years earlier, while driving in California, the psychiatrist had been pulled over and was found with an ounce of marijuana, she said.
“We wanted to privilege him,” Patch said. “As staff physicians, we felt that was 15 years ago, people change over time. Doctors are human beings too. He seemed to have good credentials and good training. The hospital said, ‘Oh no, we can’t have somebody like this.’ “
The psychiatrist was placed on probation and had to undergo a review every 90 days for about 3 years. Eventually, he was privileged, Patch said.
Bias among reviewers, including unintentional bias, is also a challenge, Marder noted. Some initial reviewers score a physician too harshly, he said, whereas others underscore.
“Underscoring is more insidious and more difficult to deal with,” Marder said. “Underscoring is where the reviewer is too nice. They tend to dismiss things from their colleagues rather than recognize them as an opportunity to help them improve. With underscoring, a lot of committees, if the initial reviewer says the care was appropriate, they don’t even look at the case. They just take that one person’s word for it.”
Reviewers: Looks Can Be Deceiving
When first examining the documented details of a case, it can be easy for peer reviewers to make a quick judgment about what happened, Beran said.
“You get these complaints, and you read through it, and you think, ‘Oh man, this person really messed up,’ ” he said. “Then you hear the doctor’s side of it, and you realize, ‘No, there’s a much bigger picture at play.’ You realize both sides have valid perspectives on it.”
In one case, for example, Beran recalled a complaint against a physician who made a snarky remark to a nurse. The doctor had asked the nurse for a piece of equipment, and the nurse said she was busy preparing the room for a patient. The doctor made a comment along the lines of, “Well, would you like me to do that for you and also intubate the patient while you do some charting?!”
At first glance, it appeared that the physician lashed out inappropriately at the nurse. But when reviewers heard from the doctor, they learned that the nurses knew that a trauma patient was coming by ambulance and that he would likely require a ventilator, Beran said. As the minutes ticked by, however, the nurses were seen in the breakroom chatting. Nothing had been prepared in the room, including any airway supply.
“The patient had a prolonged course and a very difficult intubation and could have very easily wound up with a much worse outcome for something the nurses had been warned about prior to the patient’s arrival,” he said. “I can see anybody getting upset in that situation if I warned them 5 or 10 minutes beforehand, ‘Get this stuff ready,’ and then nothing was done.”
There was no direct penalty for the physician.
Just as some complaints can be misleading, the clinical record in some peer review cases can also lead reviewers astray.
Physicians frequently include too much irrelevant information in the record, which can cloud a peer review, said Hans Duvefelt, MD, a family physician at Pines Health Services, in Van Buren, Maine. Duvefelt is a former medical director at Bucksport Regional Health Center, in Ellsworth, Maine. Both facilities are federally qualified health centers where continuous, random peer reviews are required.
In one case, Duvefelt was peer reviewing a physician’s office note regarding an elderly patient with a low-grade fever. The final diagnosis was urinary tract infection. Duvefelt said he had trouble following the doctor’s line of thinking because of a plethora of unnecessary data in the 10-page document. The office note included past medical history, prior lab and imaging test results, and an extensive narrative section that included a mixture of active medical problems and ongoing relationships with specialists, he said.
After reading through the printout three times, Duvefelt said he finally found mention of increased urinary dribbling and details about an enlarged prostate. He also spotted a same-day urinalysis among nearly a dozen other previous lab tests that had no connection to body temperature. Duvefelt gave the physician a passing grade but also left a scathing note about all the irrelevant information.
“It’s very common,” Duvefelt said. “It’s a disaster. Other doctors can’t follow your thinking. A reviewer has a hard time determining whether the doctor acted reasonably.”
Slackers Make Bad Reviewers
Although dedicated reviewers work hard to get to the bottom of cases, it’s not uncommon for some committee members to hardly work at all, according to experts.
Marder said he’s seen many instances in which reviewers were assigned a review but did not complete it for months. Most committees have set time frames in which reviewers must complete their review.
“That delays that review, and by that time, the review is older and it’s harder to remember things,” he said. “It’s not fair to the physician. If there was a problem the physician could fix and you don’t tell him for 3 or 4 months what it is, he may do the same thing again. The case might come before the committee again and it looks like he’s repeated something, but you never gave him the opportunity to improve.”
Other reviewers fail to attend meetings regularly. Peer review committee members are generally volunteers, and meetings are usually held in the early mornings or late evenings.
“There are reasons for not attending occasionally, but some people put on a committee just don’t take it seriously,” Marder said. “They don’t fulfill their responsibilities as well as they should. If you accept the job, do the job.”
For physicians considering becoming a peer reviewer, Beran offers these tips: Be transparent, help physicians understand next steps, and make yourself as available as allowed to answer questions.
Know your committee’s policies and procedures, and follow them, adds Marder. It’s also a good idea to work with your hospital’s quality staff, he said.
Reviewers should keep in mind that they may not always be the one assessing someone else, Beran said.
“Realize very easily you could be on the other side of that table for things that are outside your control,” he said. “How would you want to be treated?”
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