Blog & Articles

[3 MIN READ]

Apology laws have always been a quandary. I have repeatedly said they make docs feel more comfortable about apology but have little legal value. Most would assume apology laws reduce medial malpractice claims but a study by Stanford Law Review shows that this is not the case. In states with apology laws, non-surgeon physicians saw higher rates of medical malpractice lawsuits and dollars paid out. Defense lawyers should want to use the evidence created in a disclosure process if a case goes to trial.

[3 MIN READ]

Do your clinicians have a plan for how to address a patient’s family if a medical error occurs?

Consider this true case that was shared with me by a California risk manager – a routine test that goes tragically wrong:

"Mrs. Woods is a 53-year old woman who goes to the hospital for a CT-guided biopsy of the liver. The staff assures Mrs. Woods the test is ‘no big deal’ so she tells her husband to go across the street to do some shopping during the test. The clinical team assures Mr. Woods they will call him when the test is complete. Mr. Woods is standing in Macy’s when his cell phone rings … he answers to hear a nurse frantically screaming, 'Come quickly!' Mr. Woods races across the street to the hospital where he learns his wife is dead."

After reading this case in my training programs, I challenged my healthcare audiences with the following: 

Tom Syzek, MD, FACEP, served as the Chief Risk Officer of a multi-specialty physician group and President of the group’s captive insurance company. In those roles, he was the focal point for the Communication and Resolution Program (CRP); he attributes many prevented lawsuits to an effective communication and resolution strategy. We picked Tom’s brain to understand some key questions that we hear clients ask about Communication & Resolution Programs.

As the healthcare industry constantly evolves and “return on investment” remains a focus, it is becoming more imperative that risk managers allocate their budgets in areas that have the greatest impact on mitigating claims and litigation.

Fortunately, The Sullivan Group has the luxury of working with many large, sophisticated, self-insured hospital systems as well as smaller single-site facilities and physician groups. This experience has helped us identify four key areas that an organization should consider when developing its loss prevention strategy.

[3 MIN READ]

“It’s all about communication!”

The world of medicine has changed by leaps and bounds over recent decades. Computers are part of our daily lives, and technological advances have significantly improved our ability to diagnose and treat diseases that were once thought incurable.

Despite this incredible progress, healthcare providers continue to commit far too many medical errors. And unfortunately, many of these mistakes are simply caused by “poor communication.”

A recent Ob.Gyn. News article reported that the State of Iowa has joined Oregon and Massachusetts in passing a comprehensive disclosure law. The apology laws from these three states go beyond the simple immunity for empathy or apology that exists in 36 other states. Instead, they lay the foundation for the development of actual disclosure programs that help consumers and clinicians communicate and resolve differences post-event, including compensation for serious harm or death caused by malpractice.