Hospital peer review and the National Practitioner Data Bank: clinical privileges action reports

The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) is believed to be an important source of information for peer review activities by the majority of those who use it. However, concern has been raised that hospitals may be underreporting physicians with performance problems to the NPDB.

To examine variation in clinical privileges action reporting by hospitals to the NPDB, changes in reporting over time, and the association of hospital characteristics with reporting.

Retrospective cohort study of privileges action reports to the NPDB between 1991 and 1995, linked with the 1992 and 1995 databases from the Annual Survey of Hospitals conducted by the American Hospital Association.

A total of 4743 short-term, nonfederal, general medical/surgical hospitals throughout the United States that were continuously open between 1991-1995 and registered with the NPDB.

(1) Reporting of 1 or more privileges actions during the 5-year study period and (2) privileges action reporting rates (numbers of actions reported per 100000 admissions).

Study hospitals reported 3328 privileges actions between 1991 and 1995; 34.2% reported 1 or more actions during the period. The range of privileges action reporting rates for these hospitals was 0.40 to 52.27 per 100000 admissions, with an overall rate of 2.36 per 100000 admissions. The proportion of hospitals reporting an action decreased from 11.6% in 1991 to 10.0% in 1995 (P=.008). After adjustment for other factors, urban hospitals had significantly higher reporting than rural hospitals (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.21 [95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-1.43]), while members of the Council of Teaching Hospitals of the Association of American Medical Colleges had significantly lower reporting than nonmembers (adjusted OR, 0.54 [95% CI, 0.40-0.73]). There were notable regional differences in reporting, with the east south Central region having the lowest rate per 100000 admissions (1.49 [95% CI, 1.33-1.65]).

The results of this study indicate a low and declining level of hospital privileges action reporting to the NPDB. Several potential explanations exist, 1 of which is that the information reported to the NPDB is incomplete.