Get the Full Story as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant
The medical record rarely tells the full story in a medical malpractice case. It often seems as though the healthcare team has forgotten the purpose of the medical record and is intent on hiding as many of the real events as possible. Some providers go out of their way to blatantly lie about an incident. In many cases, the electronic medical record and its limitations even encourages this practice. No wonder patients who are harmed from a hospital stay (considering that 20% of every patient suffers a preventable harm, there’s plenty of them) view litigation as their only recourse. Their own medical record is unlikely to spell out the truth of what really happened.
Now a more open and contemporary style of communicating medical error disclosure is emerging and may actually help to reduce lawsuits rather than increase them. It takes a lot of guts to tell a patient that an error has occurred, to extend an apology and to make an offer of compensation. Timely identifying when deviations from the standard of care have harmed a patient coupled with a “disclosure and offer” policy is proving to be a more cost-effective way to reach satisfying resolutions.
Facilities who implement a “disclosure and offer” strategy are reporting a reduction in lawsuits, improvements in patient safety and are ultimately saving money.
I’ve always said a lot of medical malpractice lawsuits can be prevented by a simple “I’m sorry”, and finally there’s data to back me up.
I’m just sayin’
P.S. Comment and share if your hospital implements a “disclosure and offer” strategy and how patients are responding to it.
One thought on “Get the Full Story as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant”
This story reminds me of my first time finding the badly orchestrated cover-ups which we as CLNC® consultants call “Tampering or Missing Records.” We also see omission of documentation, and then months later there are new notes added to cover the incident, which is against their own P&P for timely late documentation (that is a nice catch). I would think the “disclosure and offer” would be a big hit. I have never heard of this is my area of Wyoming.
I am in the middle of a medical malpractice case now. I noticed something different when searching for Standards of Care. I had trouble finding them and discovered that they changed the name of Medical Standards of Care to “Medical Clinical Guidelines.” I just kept trying to word every search different until it worked. Is it just me or did they change the lingo to keep litigation off their trail?
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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.
This story reminds me of my first time finding the badly orchestrated cover-ups which we as CLNC® consultants call “Tampering or Missing Records.” We also see omission of documentation, and then months later there are new notes added to cover the incident, which is against their own P&P for timely late documentation (that is a nice catch). I would think the “disclosure and offer” would be a big hit. I have never heard of this is my area of Wyoming.
I am in the middle of a medical malpractice case now. I noticed something different when searching for Standards of Care. I had trouble finding them and discovered that they changed the name of Medical Standards of Care to “Medical Clinical Guidelines.” I just kept trying to word every search different until it worked. Is it just me or did they change the lingo to keep litigation off their trail?