How can we ever track and provide real numbers with regard to patient harm when hospitals are allowed to settle and silence victims, and seal court cases from the public? Transparency is transparency and it should include making all cases available to the public. Part of a healthy recovery for patients is being free to talk about the harm. Anything less is like extortion, in my opinion. Trading money for silence is, in my opinion, a huge patient safety issue. I would love to see a study being done that would enable us to see what percentage of medical harm is happening at teaching hospitals. I am of the mind that the highest percentage of harm is most likely happening there. Does this make them bad? Not necessarily. It may, however, give us a clue as to how well a teaching hospital is being supervised. I have said it all along. Students and Fellows will always make mistakes. Why cant they create a patient fund for these kind of cases? Why not create a fund through an investment firm. Why not eliminate the use of the word Malpractice when it is the result of a teaching moment and they have been properly supervised. Proper supervision is probably the number one cause of harm in a teaching hospital. How can we measure these things if cases are sealed, patients are silenced and hospitals are not required to report all cases?
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:31:29 +0000