American Medical News reporter Kevin O’Reilly writes about a presentation by David Mayer, M.D., University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Patient Safety Excellence co-director, at an AHCJ Chicago chapter event. The event shed light on some ways to tackle malpractice and errors in a way that will benefit both physicians and their patients.
Mayer talked about turning doctors away from the “deny and defend” approach to malpractice and toward an open disclosure of medical errors. He seeks to reduce malpractice suits through a “seven pillars” approach. Here’s a quick summary of how things work:
- Patient safety incident reporting: Push for fast reporting of possible incidents
- Investigation: Figure out if something really went wrong.
- Communication and disclosure: Keep patient and family informed during the entire process. Even if it involves very bad news.
- Apology and remediation: Don’t just apologize, tell them how you’re going to fix the damage and/or offer compensation.
- System improvement: Change the system to prevent it from happening again, invite the patient and family to participate.
- Data tracking and performance evaluation: Keep a massive database of all safety incidents and use it with impunity, even for public outreach.
- Education and training: Carefully monitored continuing education that is informed and directed by error monitoring and in-house incidents.
Meyer’s pillars are going to be implemented in nine Chicago-area hospitals, thanks to a $3 million grant from the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The grant is one of seven “demonstration grants” the AHRQ awarded as part of its program to evaluate “Patient Safety and Medical Liability” projects. The agency also awarded 13 smaller planning grants.
