Posts in Professional Licensing & Peer Review.
Colorado's Peer Review Privilege in Peril

The confidentiality of medical staff peer review has long been a cornerstone of hospital operations, fostering an environment where physicians can candidly evaluate medical care without the looming specter of malpractice exposure.  But this established norm is facing a new threat in Colorado, where a ballot proposal aims to gut peer review confidentiality.

The Foundation of Peer Review Confidentiality

Peer review is a process in which physician conduct that endangers patients within a hospital can be immediately reviewed by peers.  Peer review’s goal is to promote continuous ...

Peer Review Hearings Are Not Court Trials: California Reaffirms Flexible Nature Of Fair Procedure

The California Supreme Court recently issued its decision in Boermeester v. Carry.  Though the case deals with fair procedure within a private university’s internal disciplinary proceedings, it provides helpful guidance for peer review bodies navigating medical disciplinary hearings.

Boermeester reiterated the long-standing admonition that courts should not try to impose “rigid procedures” upon private organizations’ administrative proceedings.  Rather, the organizations themselves should develop methods for providing the fundamentals of fair ...

Introducing Nossaman’s Newest Podcast: Legal Prescriptions

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest podcast, Legal Prescriptions. This audio series will explore recent developments impacting healthcare companies and professionals, including legislation, reform, managed care, litigation, regulatory compliance and privacy. In addition to the innovative minds at Nossaman, we look forward to welcoming industry experts to the conversation to lend their perspectives.

In our flagship episode, I chat with John Puente, who served as Deputy Director and Chief Counsel to the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS ...

Peer Review or Employment? A Framework for Addressing Physician Performance Issues in Hospitals

COVID-19 accelerated the trend of physician employment with hospitals, with recent data showing that nearly 70 percent of physicians are employed by hospitals or hospital-affiliated foundations or groups.  While physician integration improves quality of care and clinical efficiency, it also blurs the separation of responsibilities between the medical staff and the employer.  This can create headaches for stakeholders who want to address physician performance issues. … 

California’s New Apology Law and Its Impact on Peer Review Hearings

Parties in peer review hearings can present a wide range of relevant evidence, regardless of its admissibility in a court of law.  But California has passed a new “apology law” that modifies that standard, erecting a potential hurdle for medical staffs to admit relevant evidence against practitioners in peer review hearings.

Under California law, statements, writings, or benevolent gestures expressing sympathy or a general sense of benevolence relating to the pain, suffering, or death of a person involved in an accident are inadmissible in civil trials.  (Evid. Code, § 1160.)  ...

A New Accreditation Standard and What It Means for Medical Staffs

It’s no secret that patients from marginalized groups experience lower quality health care.  Acknowledging its role in closing the health care disparity gap, the Joint Commission recently announced new and revised requirements to reduce health care disparities in accredited facilities.  For medical staffs, the new accreditation standard provides an opportunity to lead the fight against health care disparities.

Medical literature over the past twenty years confirms the persistence of health care disparities.  In August 2021, the Journal of the American Medical Association ...

Anticipating AB 890’s Implementation: Now is a Good Time for Medical Staffs to Get Their Ducks in a Row

Given California’s shortage of primary care providers, nurse practitioners (“NPs”) are increasingly being asked to fill gaps in provider coverage.  With that background, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 890 (“AB 890”) into law in 2020.  AB 890 allows NPs to practice with expanded independence under certain conditions.  Although nearly two years have passed since AB 890 was enacted, regulatory and legislative delay have prevented full implementation of the law.

But that’s expected to change soon.  The Board of Registered Nursing anticipates the law will be fully ...

Medical Group Peer Review: The Next Frontier

While hospital medical staffs have traditionally handled most of California’s peer review activity, recent trends are forcing more and more medical groups to wrestle with reporting and fair hearing obligations when disciplining physicians—or else face costly litigation from doctors and six-figure fines from the Medical Board of California.

Broadly speaking, peer review is how healthcare entities—including medical groups—determine whether a physician is qualified to practice in a particular healthcare setting and perform ongoing assessments of that ...

Ruling Addresses Anti-SLAPP Usage in Medical Peer Review Process

The California Supreme Court has addressed yet another brick in the anti-SLAPP wall protecting the medical peer review process from challenges by disgruntled physicians and delivered a mixed-bag opinion, with one holding favoring peer reviewers and the other favoring the plaintiff physician. Readers of this blog are familiar with the ever-shifting battlefront between peer reviewers and reviewed physicians over the former’s use of the anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16) to protect their review process from legal challenges by physicians. … 

California Nurse Practitioners Eligible for Greater Practice Independence in 2021

On September 29, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 890 into law, launching significant changes to the scope of practice for Nurse Practitioners (“NPs”) over the next few years.

Effective January 1, 2021, NPs who meet certain education and training requirements will be able to perform certain functions without standardized procedures in specified healthcare settings where one or more physicians … 

Department of Consumer Affairs Waives Physician Assistant Supervision Requirements to Make More Providers Available for COVID Surge

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s March 30th Executive Order authorized the Department of Consumer Affairs to issue waivers of certain laws and regulations pertaining to healthcare licensees. On April 14th, the Department of Consumer Affairs issued Waiver Order 20-04, waiving certain key restrictions on physician assistants’ (“PAs’”) supervision.

The waiver order “only applies if” a PA moves to a hospital or practice setting “to assist with the COVID-19 response”; or, if no supervising physician is available to supervise the PA pursuant to a practice ...

Considerations for Conducting Remote Peer Review Committee Meetings

Many medical staffs are wondering whether they may conduct remote peer review committee meetings in the interest of supporting social distancing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is certainly reasonable to do so, the medical staff must ensure that they have appropriate safeguards in place prior to conducting such meetings. Below we have provided the answer to some questions that may arise when deciding whether to conduct peer review meetings remotely.

Do the governing documents already allow for meetings to be conducted by telephone or video?

Medical staffs should ...

Is It the End of Yaqub for Hearing Officer Selection?

For more than 15 years, the process of selecting a hearing officer for a medical staff peer review proceeding has been strongly influenced by the decision in Yaqub v. Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System 122 Cal. App. 4th 474 (2004). That decision held that a hearing officer in a peer review proceeding was disqualified for a financial bias based upon the hearing officer's “long–standing and continuous relationship" with the hospital, which created a “possible temptation" to favor the hospital.

The court disqualified the hearing officer despite the fact that “there ...

Medical Board of California Releases Draft Regulations for New Physician Health and Wellness Program

In anticipation of its November Board meeting this past week, the Medical Board released its Medical Board Staff Report along with a long-awaited draft of the enabling regulations for its Physician Health and Wellness Program.

While the re-establishment of a Physician Health and Wellness Program is a positive development, the new Program is structured in a way which fails to encourage physicians with substance abuse problems to enter the Program voluntarily at an early stage of their addiction ...

California Health Care Entities Required to Report Patient Allegations of Sexual Abuse or Misconduct

As of January 1, 2020, when a patient (or their representative) submits a written allegation of sexual abuse or sexual misconduct to a health care entity, that entity must report the allegation to the appropriate state licensing agency (e.g., the Medical Board of California) within 15 days of receipt. (SB 425, codified at Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Section 805.8) After making its way through the state legislature with little to no opposition from state lawmakers, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed this bill into law on October 12. The purpose of the bill was to not only accelerate the process in which state licensing boards receive notification about these serious allegations, but also to expand the types of entities that must report these events ...

Death Certificate Project: A Dragnet!

The Medical Board of California (“MBC”) began this project in 2013 when it required coroners to inform it of deaths resulting from opioids.  The influx of coroners’ reports triggered an intense enforcement effort by the MBC to mine the data in the CA Department of Justice’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (“CURES”) to identify physicians who prescribed for the persons identified in death certificates.  The MBC has conducted a veritable deluge of formal investigations of physicians and has filed an unprecedented number of accusations based on this single source.

On July 22, 2019, the California Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Wilson v. CNN.1  The primary question before the court concerned the application of the anti-SLAPP statute, Civil Procedure Code Section 425.16, to employment, discrimination, and retaliation claims.  The factual scenario before the court involved a journalist who alleged that his employer, CNN, denied him promotions, gave him unfavorable assignments, and ultimately fired him for unlawful discriminatory and retaliatory reasons.2  The employer responded by contending that the journalist was ...

On May 7, 2019, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Wilson v. Cable News Network, Inc., et al., where plaintiff was a producer at CNN who sued the media giant for employment discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and defamation after he was terminated for alleged plagiarism.  Wilson is of particular importance to the healthcare community, including hospitals, medical staffs, peer review committees, and practitioners, because it will impact the application of anti-SLAPP Special Motions to Strike under Civil Procedure Code Section 425.16 in suits ...

It is well-documented that California is facing a shortage of primary care providers.  The Californians most affected by these shortfalls are largely low-income, Latino, African American, and Native American and located in rural areas as well as in California’s largest and fastest-growing regions—the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley.  Newly-proposed legislation aims to address this problem by permitting California’s nurse practitioners to practice under certain conditions without physician supervision.

Assembly Bill 890 was introduced by ...

In a decision affecting California hospitals, medical groups, medical staffs, and physicians, the California First District Court of Appeal has concluded that a physician’s notice and hearing rights apply to situations where a hospital directs a medical group of a closed department to remove a physician from the hospital schedule.

In Economy v. Sutter East Bay Hospitals, Sutter Hospital operated a closed anesthesia department pursuant to a contract with East Bay Anesthesiology Medical Group (East Bay Group).  The exclusive contract required all physicians providing ...

On September 19, 2018, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the Patient’s Right to Know Act of 2018 (SB 1448), which will require practitioners to notify their patients when they are placed on probation on or after July 1, 2019 for the following offenses:

  • The commission of any act of sexual abuse, misconduct, or relations with a patient or client;
  • Drug or alcohol abuse directly resulting in harm to patients or to the extent that such use impairs the ability of the practitioner to practice safely;
  • Criminal conviction directly involving harm to patient health; or
  • Inappropriate ...

There is a host of new, ever changing, and conflicting guidelines from a multitude of regulators and academic societies. This evolving and uncertain landscape is making the life of a practicing pain physician in the midst of today’s nationwide opiate epidemic…painful.

Here are 10 tips to help you avoid Medical Board discipline when prescribing opiates:1

1.  Don’t Prescribe Opiates Unless…

  • The patient has exhausted all reasonable alternatives
  • There is medical indication

    - Recently documented objective evidence of/consistent with patient’s pain complaints

  • You have ...

Starting October 2, 2018, health care practitioners authorized to prescribe, order, administer, or furnish a controlled substance must query, or consult, the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES) database and run a Patient Activity Report (PAR) on each patient the first time the patient is prescribed, ordered, or administered a Schedule II-IV controlled substance. First time is defined as the initial occurrence in which a health care practitioner intends to prescribe, order, administer, or furnish a controlled substance to a patient and has ...

Take 5 before Taking the Fifth

On Friday, June 22, 2018, a Florida Appeals Court handed down its decision in Omulepu v. Department of Health Board of Medicine.  The case involved a doctor's appeal from a decision by the Florida Department of Health, Board of Medicine to revoke a plastic surgeon's right to practice medicine.  The main issue on appeal was the effect of the doctor's invocation of his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

In criminal proceedings, a defendant's invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege cannot be used against him.  Juries are instructed in criminal cases that they cannot draw ...

On September 21, 2017, the Medical Board of California adopted new regulations related to the training of midwife assistants, the administration of midwife assistant training, and the requirements for approved, midwife assistant certifying organizations. The Board took this action to implement and interpret Senate Bill 408 (2015), which added new requirements and prohibitions to the Licensed Midwifery Practice Act of 1993 under Business & Professions Code § 2516.5.

SCOPE OF PRACTICE

Business and Professions Code § 2516.5(a)(1) defines midwife assistant as:

A person, who may ...

Recently, the Medical Board of California circulated an open letter, known as a Prescriber Guidance Letter to all practitioners in California who prescribe opiates.  The letter was authored by a statewide workgroup on Prescription Opioid Misuse and Overdose Prevention.  The workgroup includes the Medical Board of California, the Board of Pharmacy, the California Department of Public Health, the DEA, DMV, California Department of Justice, California Health and Human Services, California Society of Addition Medicine, and California Healthcare Foundation, among others.

The ...

The California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) received a negative evaluation of its enforcement program in the most recent sunset review. The sunset review included a performance audit by the California State Auditor due to complaints received about the BRN’s enforcement process.

31 out of the 40 investigated consumer complaints between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2016, were not resolved within the 18-month goal set by Consumer Affairs, potentially placing patients at additional risk.  15 of those 31 delinquent complaints took longer than 36 months to resolve.  Seven of those ...

(Updated March 11, 2017) On February 3, 2017, the Medical Board of California (MBC) published the much-anticipated 12th Edition of its Manual of Model Disciplinary Orders and Disciplinary Guidelines (Guidelines).  Drafts of this latest edition had been slugging through the approval process since mid-2015.

The most notable modification is to Standard Condition #33 (Non-practice While On Probation). Under the 11th Edition, the MBC defined nonpractice as any period of time respondent is not practicing medicine in California…for at least 40 hours in a calendar month in direct ...

Our Health Law Ticker is a one-stop resource for everything new and noteworthy in healthcare law. We cover recent developments in healthcare legislation, healthcare reform, Medicare/Medicaid, managed care, litigation, regulatory compliance, HIPAA, privacy, peer review, medical staffs and general business operations for healthcare companies and licensed healthcare professionals.

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