First Response, Last Defense: Legal Privileges and Quality Improvement

Are you really  covering yourself when you conduct a sentinel event review? What about the  quality improvement flags that are a daily part of our charting  systems?    Legal privileges shield certain information from being used against you,  but the attorney-client, work-product, and self-critical analysis privileges  are poorly-understood and easy to misuse. There are opportunities here for  protecting our agencies, our providers, and our data, but missteps can open  the door to this information being used against us in civil litigation.  Failure to properly protect this information can literally allow you to prove  your own negligence in a court case.    This session will review concepts of civil litigation, evidence,  discoverability, and exclusion, then look at state and national laws that  govern this area. We will use real cases to illustrate how these privileges  work, and help you develop best-practices for self-protection. This session  is a must-see for all clinical managers, quality improvement personnel, and  medical directors.