Medical Apology Policies: A First Step In Medical Malpractice Reform?
An often overlooked tool in health care providers’ struggle with the malpractice crisis is the medical apology. Two thirds of the states provide some form of protection for the medical apology (i.e., a simple apology is not admissible in court as an admission of culpability), and settlements reached post-apology are almost invariably lower than they would be otherwise. (In the current environment, articles on medical apologies are popping up everywhere … even in the NY Times business section.)
It is important to note that an effective apology policy does not stop with the simple apology — I’m sorry that this happened to you — but must include a commitment to conduct a root cause analysis, to communicate the results to the patient and/or patient’s family, to implement systems improvements based on the results of the root cause analysis, and to offer a specific apology once the analysis is complete, and an offer of monetary compensation if the provider or its systems were at fault. Of course, it’s easier to describe these steps than to actually carry them out. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*