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Applying Quality Methodologies to Improve Healthcare Briefings on Patient Safety

Dear Jim:

A guest speaker at a conference I attended last week talked about the “negatives” of the safety initiative movement. His argument was that it is going to raise patients’ expectations even more and could lead to an increase in lawsuits. What do you think?

Jennie Simpson
Risk Manager
Las Vegas, NV

Dear Jennie:

The bottom line is that these safety initiatives are certainly going to be a positive and significant brick in the foundation of healthcare in the future. Anyone that does not think these initiatives will grow has their head buried in the sand. These initiatives will eventually reduce those clusters of clinical circumstances that lead to adverse outcomes and will therefore reduce losses. If we can concurrently shrink the types of events and activities that lead to the initiation of professional liability claims or create the so called “plus” factor, the impact will be even greater.

However, I think what the speaker was talking about is that as patients hear more and more about what is described as “preventable medical errors,” they will tend to jump to the conclusion that all errors must be the result of negligence. In the short run, we could have a bump in frequency.

Let me go a step further. We have the same concern with the CMS initiative, “no pay for poor performance.” We also know that many commercial payers are following the same playbook. This column does not lend itself to a full discussion of the evidential issues on this topic, but the fact of the matter is that these types of initiatives could affect both potential plaintiffs and our jury pools.

The other development which could impact claim frequency is an increase in studies about the number of medical errors that occur in healthcare settings. If you review only the titles or headlines in the press, one could come to the conclusion that errors are happening frequently in our hospitals. Another equally disturbing situation is that perhaps we as patients are not being told. This is what patients expect and failure to do so can put us at a greater liability risk.

Safety initiatives will have many positive effects long term, including a reduction in the underlying circumstances that cause claims. The short term is a little harder to predict, but preparation for a change in expectations would be warranted.

Sincerely,
James W. Saxton, Esq.
Stevens& Lee
Lancaster, PA

P.S.
Have questions?
Send them to: jws@stevenslee.com