As healthcare industry attention shifts to medical errors--particularly "never events" that increasingly aren't reimbursable by health insurers--healthcare organizations are adopting new, more structured ways of addressing these problems when they occur. One approach comes from the Leapfrog Group, whose policy for dealing with never events includes apologizing to families, publicly announcing errors, and trying to discover root causes, as well as not billing for anything related to such events.
Apparently, more and more hospitals are pledging to follow the Leapfrog Group's policy, based on this year's annual survey. Of the hospitals surveyed in 2008, 63 percent pledged to follow the policy, up from 52 percent in 2007. Hospitals that implemented the policy were also more likely to get a higher safe-practices score from Leapfrog, as well. Of course, it's hard to tell whether the policy caused the improvement, but safe practices are always a good thing, right?
To learn more about Leapfrog's survey:
- Read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)