On reporting medical errors within a hospital system, Germann says, “This is really a joint effort; I don’t think any one entity or organization can do it by themselves. Hospitals have to have a system in place for reporting errors and near misses. Studies have shown that organizations that aggressively support error disclosure have a decreased incidence in the number of suits and a decrease in the compensation payouts.”
The National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005
Also known as the MEDiC Act, this bill was introduced in the Senate in September 2005 by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
Designed to extend the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 and “promote a culture of safety within hospitals, health systems, clinics, and other sites of healthcare,” this act would establish a federal Office of Patient Safety and Health Care Quality to implement and oversee a new national patient safety database, as well as the MEDiC Program. This program would provide funding to those healthcare providers with systems to disclose medical errors to patients and offer fair compensation to patients if the provider is at fault.
In reducing administrative and legal costs for medical malpractice claims, the MEDiC Act would require participating medical liability insurance companies and healthcare providers to apply a percentage of their savings toward reducing medical errors. The bill also requires that, to the extent possible, some of these cost savings be passed along to providers as lower malpractice insurance premiums.
Although not specifically stated in the bill, a goal of the MEDiC Act is to provide an interim solution to the escalating costs of liability lawsuits.
“I think [medical error reporting] is a very good direction to take,” says Germann. “One of the major barriers to disclosing errors is fear of malpractice suits. To improve quality and decrease medical errors, it’s important for physicians to be able to disclose errors.”
In addition, she stresses that hospitalists and other physicians have little to fear in disclosure. “The majority of errors are not caused by incompetent physicians,” notes Germann. “They are secondary to system failures. Physicians must be able to expose these. And hospitalists see more system errors because they live within the system; they can be a great asset in helping hospital administrators improve quality and systems.”
The MEDiC Act has been under review by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions since September.
So far, 2005 and 2006 have seen big changes in liability reform and in medical error reporting. Together, this legislation—perhaps in conjunction with future laws—will change the risks of liability faced by hospitalists. “No one law is going to solve the entire problem,” says Germann. “All of these together will make the improvements.” TH
Jane Jerrard writes “Public Policy” every month for The Hospitalist.