The Pennsylvania Superior Court has waded once again into the murky waters of peer review privilege, this time laying out the requirements for a document to qualify for protection under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act and clarifying the difference between a nonconfidential incident report and a peer review document covered under the Peer Review Protection Act.

In a precedential April 28 decision in Ungurian v. Beyzman, a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court affirmed the order of a Luzerne County trial judge compelling defendant Wilkes-Barre General Hospital to produce several documents in a medical malpractice case it claimed were privileged.