Malpractice: Top medical staff challenge in 2005

Dear Medical Staff Leader:

As mentioned in the December 2 issue of this newsletter, Medical Executive Committee Institute participants were nearly unanimous in their perception that the malpractice issue is causing significant difficulty within their hospital and medical staff.

Beyond tort reform at the state or national level, there are a number of positive steps a medical staff, working along with hospital management and the governing board, can take to address this pressing issue. Medical staff leaders should encourage management to partner with the medical staff to mount a program concentrating on the following steps designed to reduce liability:

• Reduce injury by refocusing the organization's patient safety and quality improvement efforts. Your patient safety and quality improvement programs should address areas of high potential litigation. In today's environment, it doesn't make sense to focus patient safety and performance improvement activities on areas that do not also have a "business" implication. Focusing on areas of high frequency litigation allows the medical staff to prevent injury. Preventing injury is one step in reducing liability.
• Reduce the likelihood that an injured patient will sue. Nearly all research demonstrates that patients often sue hospitals and physicians due to a breakdown in the physician-patient or hospital-patient relationship. Medical staffs and hospitals should cooperate to improve communication between physicians and patients. In addition, hospitals should carefully look at the mechanisms used to obtain informed consent. Relying on recommendations from the nation's specialty societies is an excellent step in reversing over two decades of relatively inappropriate efforts by hospitals to assist physicians in obtaining informed consent.
• Reduce the cost of defense. This can best be accomplished by accelerating the rate at which your organization is moving toward the adoption of an electronic patient record. The record reflecting the patient's care and treatment is the first line of defense in the event a malpractice case is filed against a provider or the hospital. A record free of ineligible, incomplete, and imprecise entries will often deter a plaintiff's attorney from filing a claim.

This three-point program to reduce injury, reduce the likelihood that an injured patient will sue, and reduce the cost of defense is an achievable goal for a hospital and its medical staff leaders.

That's all for this week!

All the best,

Hugh Greeley
http://www.greeley.com/seminars/