Medical Malpractice Means Saying You're Sorry
The following article is being reprinted with permission from the Akron Beacon Journal:
Almost 100,000 Americans are believed to die each year from medical errors, and more are injured. Following such tragedies, patients need to understand what happened, hear an apology from their doctor, and feel reassured that something is being done to prevent that mistake from happening again.
So it is unfortunate that the nation's medical liability system has evolved to encourage the exact opposite. When a patient is injured by mistake, doctors don't always disclose their errors to patients - one 2007 survey of more than 500 US physicians and medical students revealed that 19 percent had made a minor medical error and not told about it, and 4 percent had caused a patient's disability or death through an error and not disclosed it.
The big fear, of course, is litigation. But refusing to admit mistakes or issue apologies erodes the doctor-patient relationship, and can foster the costly practice of defense medicine - a new report by three Harvard professors and an Australian colleague calculates that defensive medicine cost $45.6 billion in 2008.
It is reassuring, then, to learn what happened when one large hospital system decided to do the right thing. The University of Michigan Health System adopted a policy in 2001 of disclosing its errors, issuing apologies and, when warranted, swiftly offering financial compensation. As a result, and contrary to what some experts predicted, the number of claims has fallen 36 percent and lawsuits by 65 percent. Legal costs have also gone down.
The Michigan health system is not alone in adopting a policy of disclosing errors to patients; the Boston area's Harvard -affiliated hospitals, for example, jointly adopted an error disclosure policy in 2006. Anecdotally, they also report, through their liability insurer, a reduction in patient claims of about 2 percent to 3 percent a year, which mirrors a nationwide trend.
While tempting, it can't be concluded that the lower rates of lawsuits and claims in these examples are solely due to more transparency with error disclosure.
It could be, some experts say, that hospitals are safer now, which leads, in turn, to fewer patient claims. Still, the evidence suggests there are few detriments to disclosure. And just like individuals, institutions can improve until they openly admit their mistakes.
