When the Institute of Medicine issued a landmark report in 1999 saying that up to 98,000 people die each year in hospitals because of medical errors, a national effort was launched to improve patient safety.
And patient rights groups began pushing for disclosure of more information when problems or medical errors occur.
In Washington, a law was approved last year requiring hospitals and health care providers to give such information to patients or their families.
Yet nationally, it can still be difficult to get answers.
More than half the calls received by the National Patient Safety Foundation, an advocacy group in North Adams, Mass., are from people who want to sit down with the hospital and find out what caused a loved one’s injury or death, said board member Ilene Corina.
Her interest in these issues grew out of her own experience. Her 2-year-old son died following a tonsillectomy operation in 1990. The hospital never told her why.
“We’ve been trying to work with hospitals for years,” Corina said. “There’s no problem that gets addressed if they don’t talk about it.”
Unlike Corina, Jennifer Simon of Snohomish met face-to-face with Providence Everett Medical Center officials twice last year. Her husband, Ken Simon, died in the hospital’s emergency room in July 2003.
Earlier this year, the hospital took an additional step, asking Jennifer Simon to talk about her experience as part of a DVD on improving patient safety.
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Simon “was given an opportunity most people only dream about,” Corina said.
“I’ve been doing this work for 10 years,” she said. “They really need to be commended.”
It’s becoming more common for hospitals to admit errors, not only because it’s right to do so, but such actions can discourage lawsuits and defuse family anger, said Arthur Caplan, who heads the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical Ethics department.
Even as part of this trend, he called the Everett hospital’s actions “highly unusual” and “very commendable.”
In Washington, a new state law makes it easier for health care workers to apologize to injured patients or their families without it being used in civil cases, said Paula Bradlee, who oversees quality and safety issues at the Everett hospital.
“It’s hard,” she said. “You want to give your heart to a person who’s been hurt in any way. It’s very difficult to say anything that’s not going to be held against you later on” in a court case.
“This helps us do the right thing,” she said.
Dr. Matthew Rice, chief medical officer of Northwest Emergency Physicians, and a member of the National Patient Safety Foundation’s board, said he was asked to speak at the Everett hospital several years ago on the need to disclose medical errors to patients.
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It was a signal, he said, “that they were kind of ahead of the curve” on their willingness to disclose errors and work for increased patient safety.
“There’s bad things that happen in medicine no mater what you do,” he said. “The real trick is having doctors and nurses feeling comfortable with the idea of how to communicate with a family when things don’t go well.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@ heraldnet.com.
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