Decisions of Interest

Judicial Hearing Officer Stanley Gartenstein of Nassau County, NY, has ruled that hospital resident evaluations of an attending physician are privileged documents that cannot be used by the physician's wife in a divorce action to rebut his stated reduction in income because the evaluations “directly relate to medical instruction of residents at the hospital, in turn profoundly affecting the quality of care provided to patients.” Stern v. Stern, Index No. 07/202572 (Sup. Ct., Nassau Cty. 6/10/09).

In Stern, a wife who was suing her husband for divorce sought discovery of student evaluations of her husband's teaching methods. During the pendency of the divorce proceedings, the husband was stricken from the roster of attending physicians covering nights and weekends by the hospital at which he practiced. This significantly reduced his income. Because the hospital's Chairman and the husband had what the wife termed a “cordial relationship,” she suspected that his removal from these duties was prompted by the husband's interest in reducing his income for the purposes of equitable distribution of the marital property in conjunction with the divorce action.