"Medical Peer Review" is a process for evaluating the professional work of physicians. It began as part of various efforts to weed incompetent doctors from the medical profession. Congress strengthened that oversight by enacting the "Health Care Quality Improvement Act". Because of HCQIA, doctors evaluating colleagues through adequate peer review cannot have any judgment for money entered against them based on damages their participation in the process arguably caused. However, HCQIA is sometimes used, "not to improve the quality of medical care, but to leave a doctor who was unfairly treated without any viable remedy." An attorney isolated three (3) reasons for medical peer review in his experience. In his view they are used: [1]. by economic competitors for financial reasons; [2]. in retaliation against the physician for not 'playing ball' in one manner or another (economic or otherwise); or [3]. in retaliation for the physician raising concerns about other physicians' care and seeking to have those providers' outcomes reviewed. So individual physicians as well as their patients and potential patients must ponder whether immunity through HCQIA does more harm than good. What do you think: Should doctors pay money for the harm they cause if they do a bad job evaluating other doctors

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