Mine is not an isolated case. In numerous cases, peer-review has been abused by hospitals and their "favorite" doctors to meet their own personal and economic agenda. Hospitals and doctors use peer review as a potent weapon to attack competition, achieve racial profiling and simply getting rid of those they do not like. Once a physician gets a bad peer review, there is "domino effect" in that, other hospitals would not give you privileges, HMO’s would not put you on their panels and potential employers will turn you down. The physician’s career is finished. You get branded as a social and professional outcast.
Because of the near-absolute privileged nature and immunity of the peer-review process, there is not much redress available in the courts. As Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), points out, even the most egregious of peer-reviews prevails. There is something wrong here, peer-reviewers can get away with murder, and nobody can question them! While the government has no difficulty getting their hands on internal documents of Firestone for public to view, the medical establishment simply hides its skeletons under the guise of "public good"! How long is the public going to swallow that?
Robert Meals, Esq. has compiled a long list of physicians victimized by peer-review. Dr. Verner Waite and Robert Walker, Esq. have termed the process "kangaroo court". Dr. Edwin Dey has established a web-site to help other victims of sham peer-reviews: www.semmelweissociety.org Dr. Paul Ebert, the President of American College of Surgeons, in his editorial in January 1997, questioned whether the peer reviews could remain unbiased with the ‘corporatization of medicine.
On the other hand, the establishment uses the peer review process to hide the mistakes of their own. When you belong to the "inner circle" at a hospital, you do not get reviewed or get reviewed/disciplined less harshly. The same goes for reporting to NPDB. Even if your outcome is bad, it is brushed aside as "these things happen". Sometimes, you can make a sweet deal with the administrators, so as to avoid any reporting to NPDB. But, as mentioned before, the establishment works hard to scapegoat those who do not have the clout to be in the "inner circle" &endash; less well connected, solo and minority physicians.
Behind the smoke-screen of every one physician targeted by sham peer-review, there are a dozen physicians whose medical errors are shoved under the rug! Therein lies the real source of threat to public health and injustice to those individual physicians, who become sacrificial lambs.