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JCAHO weighs in on medical liability crisis

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, February 17, 2005

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Lawsuits filed by patients against medical practitioners who've made errors in their care may result in monetary compensation but they haven't done much to aid the cause of patient safety, according to the JCAHO.

The current medical liability system is in dire need of a revamp, according to the public policy white paper "Health Care at the Crossroads: Strategies for Improving the Medical Liability System and Preventing Patient Injury," which was issued by the JCAHO last week. The 29-member roundtable that developed the paper makes the case that the liability system should place greater focus on ensuring the right sort of patient compensation, and on encouraging disclosure of physician errors with the goal of developing better procedures and protocols to keep patients safe.

"The ultimate goal is to make healthcare as safe as it can be, while also assuring appropriate redress for patients when this is warranted," said Dennis S. O'Leary, MD, JCAHO president, in a release posted February 10 on the organization's Web site. "The medical liability system in place today simply falls short of this goal."

The roundtable identified three key strategies to attain the goal of improving patient safety:

• Actively pursue patient safety initiatives that prevent medical injury, specifically encouraging "cultures of safety" in healthcare organizations, establishing and strengthening accountability mechanisms for medical personnel, and allowing researchers access to data on liability claims to determine trends
• Promote active communications between patients and practitioners, which includes encouraging the passage of legislation to protect disclosure of mistakes and support the reporting of errors to objective third parties who can use report statistics to develop patient strategy techniques
• Create a more patient-centered injury compensation system.

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