Hospitals that want to reduce their exposure to malpractice lawsuits from patients might want to take a hard look at a new study about a radically new strategy: Being honest with patients when errors have happened.
The usual hospital strategy in the face of a malpractice event is to deny everything and hope the patient and the family go away quietly, then when a lawsuit is filed, defend it to the hilt. But they do things differently at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS), and it’s a win-win for both patients and the hospital.
Since 2001, the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) has fully disclosed and offered compensation to patients for medical errors. Under this model, UMHS has claimed to proactively look for medical errors, fully disclose found errors to patients and offer compensation when at fault.
The study — newly published in the Annals of Internal Medicine — compared liability claims before and after the “disclosure-with-offer” program was implemented between 1995 and 1997 and assessed the number of new claims for compensation, number of claims compensated, time- to-claim resolution and claims-related costs.
After full implementation of a disclosure-with-offer program, the study found that the average monthly rate of new claims decreased from 7.03 to 4.52 per 100,000 patient encounters. Likewise, the average monthly rate of lawsuits decreased from 2.13 to 0.75 per 100,000 patient encounters.
Median time from claim reporting to resolution decreased from 1.36 to 0.95 years, wrote the authors, who also reported that the average monthly cost rates decreased for total liability (rate ratio, 0.41), patient compensation (rate ratio, 0.41) and non-compensation-related legal costs (rate ratio, 0.39).
However, the researchers acknowledged that the study “design cannot establish causality” and noted that malpractice claims generally declined in Michigan during the latter part of the study period. As a result, “the findings might not apply to other health systems, given that UMHS has a closed staff model covered by a captive insurance company and often assumes legal responsibility,” the researchers said.
Source: Annals of Internal Medicine
You can view the full text of the study here.