STAND. COM. REP. 2387

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2004

RE: S.B. No. 2577

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 2577 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PEER REVIEW,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to provide protections for physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers relating to review of medical errors.

Testimony in support of this measure was received from Hawaii Medical Association, Healthcare Association of Hawaii, and Hawaii Pacific Health. Testimony in opposition was received from the Consumer Lawyers of Hawaii.

Your Committee finds that it is critical that physicians be able to continue to review the work of other physicians without fear of lawsuit or retribution. Testimony indicated that up to 98,000 Americans die every year as a result of medical errors. Your Committee further finds that medical errors are symptomatic of a systemic problem, and is better corrected if the entire healthcare system is involved.

Your Committee further finds that nationally, the response has been to design medical error reporting systems that encourage full and open reporting of medical errors and adverse outcomes while protecting the data collection and reporting process. To date, there is no centralized medical error reporting system and little reliable data are available to identify Hawaii's patient safety issues at the statewide level.

However, the data are also accessible to plaintiff attorneys. Accordingly, if health care providers and public and private organizations involved in the data and reporting process are not protected, it is unlikely that full and open reporting will occur.

Hawaii's current peer review protection law (section 624-25.5, Hawaii Revised Statutes) is narrow in scope and does not provide adequate protections for hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers to encourage open discussions about medical errors and adverse outcomes. Before a medical error reporting system can become operational in Hawaii, statutory protection for the generation and reporting of information is required.

Your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Incorporating the concept of a case review forum into the definition of quality assurance committee, and thus removing any reference to such term in this measure; and

(2) Excluding records made in the regular course of business by a hospital or health care provider as protected information.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2577, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2577, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

____________________________

ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair