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Ask the expert: When conducting peer review, who can be considered a peer?

Medical Staff Leader Connection, April 16, 2008

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Traditionally, a peer has been defined as an individual in the same specialty. However, as inpatient medical practice has become more complex, with multiple specialties involved in patient care and numerous handoffs among practitioners, that definition has proved to be too limited for effective peer review.

Many medical staffs have adopted this more contemporary definition of a peer:

A peer is an individual practicing in the same profession and who has expertise in the subject matter under evaluation. The level of subject matter expertise required to provide meaningful evaluation of a provider’s performance will be based on the area of competency and the nature of the issue or data being evaluated.

This definition implies that, although the “peer” must be a physician, he or she does not necessarily have to be board-certified in the same specialty as the physician whose work is being reviewed.

The preceding information was excerpted from Effective Peer Review: A Practical Guide to Contemporary Design by Robert Marder, MD; Mark Smith, MD, MBA, FACS; and Richard Sheff, MD.

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