Research by Stanford Health Policy's Michelle Mello looks at what happens when a group of hospitals started systematically acknowledging adverse outcomes in care by apologizing and proactively offering compensation where substandard care caused serious harm.
In communication-and-resolution programs (CRPs), hospitals and liability insurers communicate with patients about adverse events, use investigation findings to improve patient safety, and offer compensation when substandard care caused harm.
The research team interviewed 27 patients, 3 family members and 10 staff members at three U.S. hospitals that have established programs to communicate with patients about medical errors and efforts to improve safety – and offer compensation when substandard care causes harm.
We also studied neonatal resuscitation in the most severely affected infants with a filed claim for financial compensation due to substandard care.
These CRPs were quite successful in handling such events, but less consistent in offering compensation in cases involving substandard care.
Seriously injured patients, such as babies who suffer brain damage as a result of substandard obstetrics care, will be denied the compensation that their families need to provide proper care for them, according to AvMA.
Although medical liability discourages substandard care and allows patients to obtain reasonable damage compensation, there is no evidence in the literature that a fear of being sued is useful for reducing the rate of medical error [ 10].
In the mid- to late 1990s, however, several maquiladoras in Honduras, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic were criticized for substandard working conditions and excessively long workweeks (up to 75 hours, without overtime compensation) as well as for contributing to environmental pollution.
They were compensation and perks, work life balance, sense of accomplishment, imbalance of workload, need for automation technology, substandard nature of work, autonomy and security, relationship with peers, work satisfaction and organization influence.
Compensation offers beyond bill waivers were deemed appropriate in 9 of 30 of cases in which substandard care caused harm and communicated in six such cases.
