She has introduced a bill to lower the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors who disclose medical errors to patients.
Hospitals have also found that disclosing errors to patients and offering early settlements reduces the costs and frequency of litigation.
Meanwhile, patient advocates seem pleased with the new rules now that steps have been taken to prevent hospitals from shifting the costs of preventable errors to patients or their insurers.
Although nobody disputes that disclosing medical errors to patients is the right thing to do, historically, hospitals haven't done a great job of supporting physicians in doing it.
Our results show that, if the task is made sufficiently difficult, normal subjects make similar errors to patients.
Disclosing medical errors to patients is an issue separate from disclosing them to hospital administration.
In this study we are interested in disclosing medical errors to patients.
We would like to know your views on: 1) which medical error to be disclosed to patients, and 2) who to disclose medical errors to patients.
One main finding of this study is that the interviewed PTs emphasized their positive experiences in disclosing errors to patients.
Communicating medical or healthcare system errors to patients in a way that guides them to appropriate action is one of the more difficult challenges in medicine.
