Search results for "Patient Disclosure"

Patients and families can contribute to improvement when they are treated with respect and openness. This report explored the extent to which those characteristics are present in National Health Service (NHS) investigations regarding patient deaths and found them to be lacking, particularly in cases involving patients with mental health conditions or learning disabilities. The authors recommend a framework to guide behaviors consistently across the NHS to improve the timeliness and quality of investigations and ensure system-level learning.

Traditionally, health systems have disclosed adverse events to patients only through a lengthy process that involves providing limited information to patients and families, avoiding admissions of fault, and emphasizing protection of the clinicians involved. This approach may harm safety culture and has been criticized as not being patient-centered. Some pioneering institutions, such as the University of Michigan Health System, began implementing an alternative approach known as "communication and resolution," which emphasizes early disclosure of adverse events and proactive attempts to reach an amicable solution. Early adopters of this method have achieved notable results, including a decline in malpractice lawsuits. The CANDOR toolkit, developed by AHRQ as part of the Medical Liability Reform and Patient Safety Initiative, provides tools for health care organizations to implement a communication-and-resolution program. The toolkit includes videos, slides, and teaching materials, and it has been tested in 14 hospitals in several different states. A PSNet interview with the chief risk officer of the University of Michigan Health System discusses the organization's pioneering efforts to implement a communication-and-response system.

Drawing from data reported by the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), this website provides grades for hospitals in the United States based on their safety. The 2017 results are the fifth generation of the scores. A related report from the Armstrong Institute examines avoidable death associated with grading hospitals.

Sorry Works! supports a full-disclosure approach to medical errors. They encourage doctors and their insurers to be honest when mistakes happen, offer apologies, and provide compensation up-front to patients and their attorneys to minimize litigation resulting from human error in medicine.

This issue features successful patient safety innovations pertaining to disclosure, multidisciplinary patient safety conferences, and proactive reporting.

This report compiles public and private data to provide insight into the quality and safety of patient care in Australian hospitals.

This announcement describes the 19 projects funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2006 that studies the potential of simulation to improve patient safety.

This Web site provides the United Kingdom's set of disclosure guidelines for communicating with patients and families regarding unintentional harm and includes links to associated tools and information.

Full disclosure programs have shown to be effective mechanisms for early resolution of adverse events. This article reveals one early adopter's experience with full disclosure and provides insights from the architects of the program to guide others in implementing similar strategies and spread success associated with the approach.

Communication-and-response programs emphasize early disclosure of adverse events and proactive attempts to resolve incidents. This Web site provides resources for a collaborative effort to teach hospitals about disclosing to patients who have experienced a medical error.

This toolkit provides guidance and resources to help organizations inform patients about infection control lapses.

This Web site provides access to federal hospital inspection reports that detail deficiencies cited from complaint inspections at acute care and critical access hospitals.

Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) is an independent United Kingdom charity that promotes better patient safety and justice for individuals affected by a medical incident.

This document provides a series of suggestions to improve patient safety in health care systems across the European Union.

This Web site offers a collection of tools and educational materials to bolster patient safety training at the local level.

The National Quality Forum's Safe Practices for Better Healthcare provide a blueprint for organizations to improve the quality and safety of patient care. The practices are organized into seven content areas: establishing leadership structures and systems, improving safety culture, honoring patient's wishes for informed consent and error disclosure, matching health care needs with delivery capacity, facilitating information transfer and clear communication between providers, managing medications safely, preventing health care–associated infections, and implementing safe practices for specific clinical conditions and sites of care. Since the last update in 2006, seven new practices have been added and others retired. The practices are defined so that organizations can measure the relationship between implementation of the practices and patient safety outcomes.

The author proposes using trained "ambassadors" to facilitate communication between patients and caregivers after a harmful medical error in the UK's National Health Service.

This survey follows up on a prior study from 2004, asking patients about their perceptions of health care quality and medical errors. The study found minimal change since 2004 in overall impression of US health care quality, with approximately half of respondents stating they are "dissatisfied" with quality, particularly with coordination of care. More patients are aware of information comparing the quality of hospitals, health care plans, or providers, but only a small minority report using this information to make health care decisions. A large proportion of patients reported taking recommended actions to improve safety, such as bringing a list of their medications to appointments or following up on test or procedure results. As found in other studies, survey respondents overwhelmingly expressed support for full, mandatory disclosure of all preventable errors, and two-thirds felt errors should be publicly reported.

This curriculum was developed based on the authors' experiences in patient safety educational efforts. The content covers ethical issues, management of medical error, the personal effect of error on physicians, prevention of medical error, and how to educate students about patient safety.