The Utah Supreme Court today formally recognized a cause of action for ‘negligent credentialing.’ This claim is based on the hospital’s failure to properly screen or review a surgeon’s competency, skills and abilities, or the hospital allowing a known incompetent surgeon to access their surgical facilities. Just as a trucking company must make sure that the driver holds the necessary skills to keep from endangering the driving public, so to must hospitals make sure that patients are not needlessly endangered by incompetent, unskilled or unprofessional surgeons. The worst case is when a surgeon has a drug or alcohol abuse problem, yet is allowed access to the surgical room. The hospital holds the keys to the surgery room. The hospital must make sure that those it allows in will not harm patients because they don’t have the skills, are operating outside their area of expertise, or are engaged in dangerous habits like drug abuse.

In Archuleta v. St. Mark’s Hospital, the hospital allowed a surgeon into the operating room who had previously been a defendant in many medical malpractice lawsuits. Even worse, St. Mark’s had previously been named as a co-defendant alongside the offending surgeon. As a result, a patient was exposed to the hand of an incompetent and unqualified surgeon who performed an open laparotomy to revise a gastric bypass. After that encounter, the patient suffered through over six corrective surgeries and more than three years with problems still arising to her stomach and bowels.

By making hospitals accountable for the people they let into their surgical facilities, the safety of patients will be improved.

The complete opinion can be read here.