A handful of the nation’s prominent medical centers have begun encouraging doctors to admit their mistakes. Honesty, they say, may be the best way to stop expensive medical malpractice suits.
The New York Times reported this week that such advice goes contrary to what doctors have been told for years by their attorneys and insurance companies. Saying you’re sorry can be seen as an admission of guilt that doctors fear will encourage a lawsuit.
Doctors and hospital administrators say prompt and sincere admissions of mistakes, along with fair compensation, are helpful in combating lawsuits. Since making honesty its policy, the University of Michigan Health System has seen malpractice claims and lawsuits, as well as legal and settlement costs, drop dramatically.
“Improving patient safety and patient communication is more likely to cure the malpractice crisis than defensiveness and denial,” said Richard Boothman, the hospital’s chief risk officer.
The university willingly discusses cases in which it believes its staff made an error and offers settlements. As a result, filing a malpractice lawsuit against the university “is now the last option, whereas with other hospitals it tends to be the first and only option,” Norman Tucker, a trial lawyer in Southfield, Mich., told the Times.
Although his hospital has seen a decrease in claims since instituting a full disclosure policy nearly three years ago, Dr. Timothy McDonald, the University of Illinois medical center’s chief safety officer, sees a bigger issue than medical malpractice.
“I think this is the key to patient safety in the country,” he said. “If you do this with a transparent point of view, you’re more likely to figure out what’s wrong and put processes in place to improve it.”
Several states have passed laws prohibiting an expression of apology from being used in court, and a bill that would have done so in Nevada died in the Assembly last year. Next year the Nevada Legislature should find a way to encourage such transparency.
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