The Legal Center Protects Patients' Rights.

Business Editors/Legal Writers

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2003

On March 27, 2003, the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision reversing a district court decision that barred Colorado's protection and advocacy system for people with mental illness (The Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People) from obtaining access to peer review and quality assurance records in connection with its investigation of four suicides and one attempted suicide at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo.

The Colorado Attorney General's Office was successful in getting the lower court to bar access to these records on the basis of state laws making physician peer review and hospital quality assurance records privileged or confidential from disclosure in civil actions against physicians and hospitals, and a federal regulation that deferred to state confidentiality laws.

The Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision reversed the lower court holding the federal law at issue, "The Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Act," (PAIMI Act, 42 U.S.C. sec. 10801 et seq.), preempted conflicting Colorado laws to the extent the state laws denied the protection and advocacy system access to peer review and quality assurance records.

The Court of Appeals also rejected the federal regulation that deferred to state laws protecting peer review and quality assurance records from disclosure to protection and advocacy systems. The Tenth Circuit followed a decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a Pennsylvania case that held the federal regulation was not a reasonable interpretation of the PAIMI Act.

When this decision becomes final, the state hospital will be forced to turn over its peer review and quality assurance investigations to the protection and advocacy system. The system will then be able to use these investigations to check the state hospital to ensure any contributing causes for these deaths have been eliminated, thus protecting current patients from the same degree of harm.

This decision follows close on the heels of another decision by the Tenth Circuit reversing the district court's grant of summary judgment for physicians and Denver Health Medical Center. Center for Legal Advocacy v. Michael Earnest, M.D.; Patricia Gabow, M.D. and Denver Health and Hospital Authority, 320 F.3d 1107 (10th Cir. 2003). In this case, the defendants tried to force the protection and advocacy system to follow the burdensome procedures of the federal drug and alcohol confidentiality regulations before it could obtain access to the records of an intoxicated homeless person who died after being physically and chemically restrained in Denver Health's emergency department.

The Tenth Circuit found no merit to defendants' claims and remanded the case to the district court to allow the protection and advocacy system unfettered access to the deceased's treatment records.