The United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma has required Ardent Health Services to produce unredacted documents relating to the files of identified peer review physicians who practiced at the hospitals in order to examine whether the plaintiff’s peer review situation was handled differently than other physicians within the hospital.
The Court held that the Oklahoma statutory peer review privilege does not apply in this case and that the applicable test is Federal Rule Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), i.e. relevance, and the corresponding provisions of Rule 26(b)(2)(c) pertaining to burdensome, expense, and likely value.
A copy of the opinion is attached at the link below.
