Sham Peer Review

Are you familiar with the concept of a "sham peer review?" Have you lost hospital privileges? Maybe you even lost your job. Perhaps you've felt that other physicians or the hospitals were discriminating against you. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about sham peer review:

Sham peer review or malicious peer review is a name given to the abuse of a medical peer review process to attack a doctor for personal or other non-medical reasons.[1] The American Medical Association conducted an investigation of medical peer review in 2007 and concluded that while it is easy to allege misconduct, proven cases of malicious peer review are rare.[2]

Those who maintain that sham peer review is a pervasive problem suggest that the Healthcare Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) of 1986 allows sham reviews by granting significant immunity from liability to doctors and others who participate in peer reviews. This immunity extends to investigative activities as well as to any associated peer review hearing, whether or not it leads to a disciplinary (or other) action.

1 Roland Chalifoux, Jr (2005). "So What Is a Sham Peer Review?". Medscape General Medicine 7 (4): 47. PMID 16614669. PMC 1681729. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/515862.
2 "Inappropriate Peer Review. Report of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association."