Med Law Blog : Pennsylvania Health Care Lawyers & Attorneys : Tucker Arensberg Law Firm : Employee Benefits, HIPAA & HIT in Pittsburgh, PA

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In Georgopoulos v. Humility of Mary Health Partners Inc., Dr. Georgopoulos was placed upon a six month surgical proctoring requirement because of extended operating times and excessive use of blood products.  In addition to many procedural defenses, Dr. Georgopoulos’s primary substantive defense is that his patient survival and freedom from major cardiac events were within normal parameters. 

The hospital argued that the standard of whether it undertook this professional review action in the reasonable belief that it was in the furtherance of quality health care as required by the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, was an objective standard.  The court concluded that, while outcomes were obviously important in measuring the quality of health care, “The scope of health care quality encompasses more than a physician’s mortality and morbidity rates and that good patient outcome does not mean that he was not creating unnecessary risks for his patients.”

Therefore, the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment on behalf of the hospital and the named physician defendants.