April 2003

Legislation promises freedom to share information freely

The House of Representatives passed the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (H.R.663) this month. The Act encourages providers to do research and gather data about the causes of medical mishaps and share their findings with other providers in order to learn ways to remedy systems and practices. The purpose of the Act is to allow healthcare providers to gather information, analyze it and share the results with others in order to learn from medical errors.

H.R. 663 protects any "information, report, memorandum, analysis, deliberative work, statement or root cause analysis" created by or reported to a Patient Safety Organization. This will include groups already in place to survey quality and operations among healthcare providers, such as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

The information described in the Act will be protected from civil or administrative subpoenas or orders, discovery process, disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, disclosure as evidence in State or Federal civil or administrative proceedings, or use by an accrediting organization in the accreditation process or to remove accreditation. This protection will allow doctors to share information without fear that malpractice attorneys or others will use the information against them.

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