Risk Management Role in Medical Error Disclosure
The call comes in on the hospital’s Sentinel Event hotline. “This is Nurse Jones; I’m calling to report an unanticipated death in the OR. It appears an error was made…”
Risk Management immediately begins an investigation. Staff will be interviewed; equipment may be sequestered and tested; records will be meticulously reviewed. While all of that is occurring, and often before the facts of the matter are fully understood, there is also the issue of what to tell grieving family members who understandably want answers.
While the actual discussion with the family should, in most cases, be led by the attending physician, Risk Managers often set the tone. It is one of the most difficult situations that families and healthcare providers will ever face.
What happens though when risk management and clinicians are at odds about what should be disclosed and how the conversation should unfold? Disagreements among key staffers at such a difficult time can only add to the angst everyone is already feeling.
Physicians may believe that risk managers want them to cover over error in order to protect the financial interests of the hospital. Risk managers on the other hand, don’t want clinicians to hastily accept responsibility beyond what the known facts support.
However, as Grena Porto, Senior Director of Clinical Consulting, wrote in The Risk Manager’s Role in Disclosure of Medical Error: Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us in 2001, in reality the goals of both sides are often closely aligned.
“Risk managers must…make concerted efforts to educate physicians about the role of risk management in management of medical errors, including disclosure.”
Victoria Forlini notes in a recent article for Fierce Health that “A new study looking at medical errors shows that while risk managers are more likely to want an error disclosed to a patient, a physician is more likely to want to issue an apology.”
“Hospital policy also needs to state who has final authority over disclosure and how these disclosures occur.”
Read more:
http://qrshealthcare.com/PDFs/RM%20Role%20in%20Disclosure.pdf
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