STAND. COM. REP. 2794
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 Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2577, S.D. 1, entitled:
"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PEER REVIEW,"
begs leave to report as follows:
The purpose of this measure is to amend the law on proceedings and records of peer review committees and quality assurance committees.
Specifically, the measure amends the laws by:
(1) Clarifying that the function of a quality assurance committee is to identify, study, and correct deficiencies in the health care delivery system in order to reduce the risk of harm to patients and improve patient safety or improve the quality of care;
(2) Adding health care review organizations to the entities whose proceedings and records are not discoverable and defining health care review organization;
(3) Clarifying that proceedings and records that are not discoverable include recordings, transcripts, minutes, and summaries of meetings, notes, materials, or certain reports; and
(4) Exempting from the prohibition against discovery the statements made by any person contesting, in a court proceeding or other due process hearing, a hospital's decision to deny a request for privileges or restrict existing privileges.
Testimony in support of this measure was received from the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific Health, and Hawaii Medical Association. Testimony in opposition was received from the Consumer Lawyers of Hawaii.
Your Committee believes that the most significant provision of this measure is the inclusion, in the entities, of a health care review organization whose proceedings are not discoverable. A health care review organization is defined as any organization that gathers and reviews information about procedures and outcomes of health care providers and the care and treatment of patients for purposes of evaluating and improving the quality and efficiency of health care. Similar changes were inserted into the definition of quality assurance committee.
Your Committee finds that nationally, the trend is 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.
Your Committee further finds that Hawaii's 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.
Accordingly, your Committee determines that this measure should proceed unamended in order to facilitate further discussion, and to allow the interested parties, specifically Hawaii Pacific Health and the Consumer Lawyers of Hawaii, to continue to work on crafting agreeable language.
As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2577, S.D. 1, and recommends that it pass Third Reading.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs,
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____________________________ COLLEEN HANABUSA, Chair |
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