Insights
Robin Nagele Examines Maintaining Quality and Preserving Privilege for Telemedicine Providers for AHLA's Connections
In the November 2019 issue of the American Health Lawyers Association's (AHLA) Connections, Robin Locke Nagele co-authored an examination of the use of telemedicine and other outsourced providers in health care. Their discussion focuses on the current legal environment that presents obstacles to full privilege protection and outlines and compares a range of practical solutions based on state law peer review privilege and the federal Patient Safety Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA).
In the article, "Maintaining Quality and Preserving Privilege for Telemedicine and Other Outsourced Providers," the authors note:
"National contract providers such as telehealth entities and providers of hospital-based services face significant hurdles in achieving robust privilege protection for their peer review, quality, and safety oversight. For a host of reasons, they do not fit the traditional model for which state peer review privileges were designed: they operate across state lines, in a wide range of provider settings, and have neither the corporate nor the governance structure of an institutional provider with a medical staff.
Notwithstanding these challenges, contract providers can find creative ways of accessing both state law peer review privilege protections and the federal PSQIA protections by setting up their peer review/quality oversight systems within a framework that has been designed to support the claim of privilege in specific terms."