Med Mal News

NJ High Court to Consider Privilege Applied to Patient Safety Act Investigations

New Jersey's Supreme Court has decided to hear a case challenging the confidentiality protections included in the State's 2004 Patient Safety Act (PSA). That legislation was passed in response to public outrage over murders carried out by the serial killer nurse Charles Cullen in several New Jersey and Pennsylvania hospitals. Cullen had been able to move from hospital to hospital, killing at least 40 patients (according to his confessions) without discovery, in part because New Jersey hospitals at that time were not compelled by law to report suspicious deaths, unless the circumstances were egregious and very clear-cut. Now, the PSA commands hospitals to report adverse patient events, but bars documents produced in compliance with the act from discovery or from being used in any criminal or civil proceeding. In the case the Supreme Court will decide, which was brought by parents claiming their child was injured by medical negligence during childbirth, the Appellate Division determined that only documents created exclusively for PSA-compliance are exempt from discovery. That court concluded that the 2004 act “is not an invitation to health care providers to shield information that was previously accessible, under [existing discovery rules] by indiscriminately labeling items 'PSA material' or giving PSA job titles to hospital personnel who are not performing true PSA functions.”

NJ High Court to Consider Privilege Applied to Patient Safety Act Investigations

New Jersey's Supreme Court has decided to hear a case challenging the confidentiality protections included in the State's 2004 Patient Safety Act (PSA). That legislation was passed in response to public outrage over murders carried out by the serial killer nurse Charles Cullen in several New Jersey and Pennsylvania hospitals. Cullen had been able to move from hospital to hospital, killing at least 40 patients (according to his confessions) without discovery, in part because New Jersey hospitals at that time were not compelled by law to report suspicious deaths, unless the circumstances were egregious and very clear-cut. Now, the PSA commands hospitals to report adverse patient events, but bars documents produced in compliance with the act from discovery or from being used in any criminal or civil proceeding. In the case the Supreme Court will decide, which was brought by parents claiming their child was injured by medical negligence during childbirth, the Appellate Division determined that only documents created exclusively for PSA-compliance are exempt from discovery. That court concluded that the 2004 act “is not an invitation to health care providers to shield information that was previously accessible, under [existing discovery rules] by indiscriminately labeling items 'PSA material' or giving PSA job titles to hospital personnel who are not performing true PSA functions.”