Disclose, apologize and offer compensation: That’s been the University of Illinois Medical Center’s response to medical errors and adverse events since 2006, a strategy the center says has not led to a rise in lawsuits or financial payouts.
Although malpractice lawyers often warn providers against admitting and apologizing for medical errors to reduce their risk of liability, Timothy McDonald, MD, chief safety officer at the Chicago center, says the facility’s seen a 40% decline in lawsuits and no increase in financial payouts in the 4 years since it instituted the full disclosure policy.
"Sorry alone doesn't work unless we learn from our mistakes," Dr. McDonald, a pediatric anesthesiologist, tells the Wall Street Journal. "We have to also make promises that this won't happen again and get patients and families engaged in the effort to improve our performance."
In addition to disclosing and apologizing for errors, the Chicago center invites patients and their family members to participate in a safety board that develops plans for preventing future errors. The facility also praises staff who promptly report errors and punishes those who fail to do so or who engage in reckless behaviors that threaten patient safety, according to a report on the WSJ’s Health Blog.
Dr. McDonald says the culture change has doubled the number of patient safety incident reports and spurred nearly 200 process improvements at the facility. For example, a retained sponge left in a patient despite a manual count that appeared correct led to a policy of using X-rays to check for retained objects in patients at a heightened risk, such as morbidly obese patients or those undergoing emergency surgeries.
Dr. McDonald and cardiac anesthesiologist Dave Mayer, MD, founded a for-profit patient safety education company that is producing a series of videos to be used in healthcare staff training. The trailer for the first video, "The Faces of Medical Error: From Tears to Transparency," is embedded below. Drs. McDonald and Mayer say the profits from TransparentHealth will go to the families whose stories are highlighted in the videos and toward the production of future videos.
