Tennessee passed the Health Care Consumer Right to Know Act to ensure that health care consumers can make informed decisions when choosing health care providers by giving them as much information about providers as possible.  Among other information, the Act requires each regulatory board to report information about all providers for the preceding ten years, including all criminal convictions, board disciplinary actions of any state board, and all medical malpractice judgments in favor of the complainant.1  Such information will be utilized to create publicly available provider profiles; all other privileged information generated by a peer review program may not be disclosed.2

        In addition to the Right to Know Act, Tennessee provides additional avenues through which information held by a medical board or obtained through a peer review process may be disclosed.  If charges are filed against a practitioner, the board of medical examiners may disclose the information and materials that serve as a basis for those charges to the public.3  In disclosing such information, the board must keep identifying information about the complainant, the patient and the relevant medical records confidential. 4