Today, many hospitals are looking to independent review organizations to provide hospital peer reviews on sentinel events and bad outcomes that occur in their hospital. Why? Well it's no secret that the peer review process often does not work very well inside hospitals for a couple of reasons. First, all physicians are too busy working on patients and so peer reviews never get done. Second, there is a lot of conflict of interest associated with peer review committees. Hospital staffs have competitive pressures among the doctors working there. Oftentimes this can lead to unfair determinations against a doctor for competitive reasons.

Outsourcing hospital peer review cases is an emerging a best practice. Many hospitals are routinely sending their most difficult and complex sentinel events out for review to independent review organizations because they know they can get an objective non-conflicted decision and fast turn around time. Most hospitals are using IROs today for hospital peer reviews systematically send cases out and have developed standard criteria about deciding which cases to send out as opposed to letting them languish in peer review committees.

Oftentimes conflicts of interest can not be dealt with effectively inside the peer review committee environment. Many times, the chief medical officer or medical director who is responsible for the case makes attempts to keep cases in house