title: Peer review and psychiatric physician fitness for duty evaluations: analyzing the past and forecasting the future.
abstract: In the United States, oversight of health care practitioners is delegated to a matrix of health care entities including but not limited to the state medical board which licenses physicians in the relevant jurisdiction. Typically, these organizations have their own codes of professional conduct. When a physician joins one of these health care organizations, legally the physician has entered into a contract with the organization and agreed to be bound by its regulations and procedures. The organization's peer review of a member physician for reasons of investigating questions of health care quality may require a psychiatric fitness for duty evaluation. That assessment is a forensic psychiatric examination to assist the peer review body much as an expert witness would assist the trier of fact in a criminal or civil law adjudication. Experts can better perform these functions if they are familiar with the legal differences that define these agencies' service under administrative as compared to civil or criminal law and procedures.
authors.affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, United States. donald_meyer@hms.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Donald J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.forename: Marilyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Price
mesh_terms: D005544:Forecasting; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D033161:Government Regulation; D006801:Humans; D008004:Licensure; D010380:Peer Review / Q000379:methods*; D028743:Professional Misconduct / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D012955:Societies, Medical; D014481:United States