No Sealing of Health Care Quality Review Report in Doctor-vs.-Hospital Lawsuit

"Plaintiff would have his allegations litigated in a star chamber with a jury of ordinary citizens presumably barred from discussing the case after their service in a closed courtroom."

From Gabros v. Shore Medical Center, decided last week by Judge Noel Hillman (D.N.J.) (emphasis added) (for the backstory on the case, see here):

The Parties seek to seal … a report by the National Practitioner Data Bank ("NPDB"), submitted by Defendant Shore Medical Center on June 18, 2015. This report was a result of the final adverse action taken by SMC to revoke Plaintiff's clinical privileges.

In 1986, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 ("HCQIA"), 42 U.S.C. § 11101, et seq. The HCQIA requires that certain information regarding malpractice payments, sanctions, and professional review actions taken with respect to medical professionals be reported to the federal government. 42 U.S.C. § 11131-7. The regulations promulgated pursuant to the HCQIA established the National Practitioner Data Bank to collect and organize information collected under the HCQIA.

The NPDB operates as a centralized clearinghouse for state licensing boards, hospitals, and other health care entities to obtain relevant background information about physicians. Hospitals are required to request information from the NPDB with respect to each physician or health care practitioner who applies for staff membership or clinical privileges. The NPDB makes the information it collects available to "State licensing boards, to hospitals, and to other health care entities (including health maintenance organizations) that have entered (or may be entering) in an employment or affiliation relationship with the physician or practitioner or to which the physician or practitioner has applied for clinical privileges or appointment to the medical staff." 42 U.S.C. § 11137(a).

Section 11137 also outlines the confidentiality provisions applicable to the information collected under the HCQIA. Specifically, it mandates:

"Information reported under this subchapter is considered confidential and shall not be disclosed (other than to the physician or practitioner involved) except with respect to professional review activity … or in accordance with regulations of the Secretary promulgated pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. Nothing in this subsection shall prevent the disclosure of such information by a party which is otherwise authorized, under applicable State law, to make such disclosure. Information reported under this subchapter that is in a form that does not permit the identification of any particular health care entity, physician, other health care practitioner, or patient shall not be considered confidential."

As such, unless otherwise provided by state law, all information collected by the NPDB and "reported under this subchapter" is presumed confidential and is only released as specifically mandated by the HCQIA.

The Parties contend that federal law prohibits disclosure of National Practitioner Data Bank reports. The Parties highlight that the purpose of the NPDB and its reports is to improve health care quality, protect the public, and reduce health care fraud and abuse in the United States. According to the Parties, if NPDB reports were available to the public, reporting entities would lose confidence in the NPDB's confidentiality protections. The Parties argue that this lack of confidence would lead to a decline in voluntary or optional reports regarding problematic officials and would ultimately hinder the reliability and effectiveness of the NPDB in serving its public policy goals.

The Court has closely reviewed the documents the parties ask the Court to seal and does not find a legitimate private or public interest warranting sealing, nor a serious injury that would result from a failure to seal. While there is no doubt a generalized public benefit from a confidential reporting system allowing medical employers to share information about the qualifications of licensed medical professionals, that interest must fall away when those reports are themselves evidence in a matter pending in federal court or any court. The alternative is that medical employers and professionals may generate false or truthful information about each other material to their dispute and the potential claims of injured third parties under a regime where that information never sees the light of day.

It is hard to imagine how that benefits the public at large and begs the question why a federal court should aid in such secrecy absent clear statutory direction. What the parties really envision is a system that always shields the airing of claims of incompetency and malfeasance by medical professionals and the medical institutions that hire them. This lack of transparency and absolute immunity is as likely to cause false reports as it is to foster candor.

Nor does the relevant statute create such an absolute private world immune from outside scrutiny. It is one thing to say that information should be confidential between the parties for regulatory purposes and quite another to say that information can never be revealed when disputes arise over the content of such reports. The only law cited by the parties actually authorizes disclosure for purposes of litigation when the system breaks down as envisioned. See 45 C.F.R. 60.18(a)(1)(v) (allowing use of NPDB reports in medical malpractice litigation where hospital failed to request information from the NPDB).

Moreover, there can be no better example of the overbreadth of the parties' argument for sealing than this case. Plaintiff's case hinges on allegations that NPDB reports about him were false and he demands a jury trial. Plaintiff would have his allegations litigated in a star chamber with a jury of ordinary citizens presumably barred from discussing the case after their service in a closed courtroom. There is no precedent for such a proceeding in federal court except in those rare cases which might involve classified information or national secrets and even in those cases redactions and sanitized versions allow for public access.

In sum, the Court is unpersuaded by the parties' arguments that denying their motion to seal the NPDB reports will have a chilling effect on reporting. Moreover, there is nothing in binding case law or the relevant statute itself expressly forbidding disclosure of these reports in the context of the claims brought by this Plaintiff. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, this Court has repeatedly emphasized the public interest in the disclosure of materials filed on this Court's docket, which often outweighs private interests in confidentiality.

This Court is funded by the public and does not sit, in general, to resolve private disputes in secret. Finding that the parties lack a legitimate justification to warrant sealing the identified information, the Court will deny the parties' joint motion to seal with regard to the NPDB reports….

The court also refused to seal a past opinion in the case:

The Parties argue that because the Court's Opinion "recites the content of the NPDB and DCA Reports verbatim," allowing public access to this opinion is "tantamount to allowing the public to review the reports themselves."

Having reviewed the Court's June 2019 Opinion, the Court notes that this Opinion does not contain any personally identifiable information or sensitive information that would justify granting the parties' joint motion to seal. And as the Court has noted, that the Opinion recites certain content from the NPDB and DCA is an insufficient reason to seal it.

Finally, while this Court's decisions are binding on no one except the parties, the development of the federal case law requires that the reasoning of the Court in interpreting statutes be widely available to be considered by sister courts as persuasive authority or not. The Court's 52-page opinion discusses the statute of limitations for defamation claims arising from NPDB reports, the scope of immunity under the HCQIA, and the reach of analogous claims under state statutory law.

The development of the law would be stymied if Courts issue secret rulings known only to the parties. In short, because the Court does not make its decisions in secret, the Court finds it is in the public interest to allow the June 2019 Opinion containing the resolution of certain issues in this case to made public….

Despite this decision, the June 2019 opinion remains sealed, presumably as a result of some delay in the Clerk's Office; I'll post it as soon as it's unsealed.