8-2101.Information obtained.

This is the core provision of Illinois's Medical Studies Act privilege. It covers information, interviews, reports, statements, memoranda, recommendations, reference letters, and other third-party confidential competence assessments generated by a long list of named entities and committees — state and local health departments, the Department of Human Services, the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Medical Review Board, medical societies, health maintenance organizations and organizations under contract with them, tissue banks, organ procurement agencies, physician-owned insurers, and committees of hospitals or ambulatory surgical treatment centers or their medical staffs, including named examples such as Patient Care Audit Committees, Medical Care Evaluation Committees, Utilization Review Committees, Credential Committees, and Executive Committees.

The privilege attaches only to material "used in the course of internal quality control or of medical study for the purpose of reducing morbidity or mortality, or for improving patient care or increasing organ and tissue donation." The statute is explicit about what falls outside that privilege: "the medical records pertaining to the patient" themselves are not covered — only the committee-generated review-and-study materials are.

Protected material is privileged and strictly confidential, and it may be used only for medical research, increasing organ and tissue donation, evaluating and improving quality of care, or granting, limiting, or revoking staff privileges or agreements for services.

The section builds in one exception: in an HMO proceeding to decide a physician's services, a hospital or ambulatory surgical treatment center proceeding to decide staff privileges, or judicial review of either, confidentiality cannot be invoked to deny the physician affected by that decision access to or use of the data the decision was based on.