Legislation may give legal protection to patient safety
Legislation making its way through Congress could represent a major improvement in the protections afforded information that is reported for the purposes of improving quality and patient safety.
The legislation has been lauded by representatives from many areas in health care, such as American Association of Health Plans president and CEO Karen Ignagni. She says the tripartisan legislation introduced by Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-VT), John Breaux (D-LA), and Bill Frist (R-TN) that would give legal protection to information that is the voluntarily reported for purposes of quality improvement and patient safety.
Legal protection for the information could make it possible to fulfill some goals outlined in the 1999, Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on medical errors, she says. The IOM report says the best way to reduce medical errors is to expand the use of voluntary reporting systems — which currently are underutilized — so that providers and other health care participants can learn from past incidents.
"The IOM recognized, however, that in our current environment, with malpractice lawsuits increasingly out of control, providers have a strong incentive not to report this information," Ignagni says. "The sad result is that we have virtually no information about why medical errors happen, and lives continue to be lost as a result. We need to replace this culture of blame with a culture of safety, that puts the lives of patients over the interests of trial lawyers."
Dick Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association, also praised the legislation. "The bill lays out a common-sense approach to improving patient safety," he says.
"Creating a culture of safety within our organizations is key, where nurses and doctors share information when mistakes happen to help us learn from and prevent them," he says. "But a major obstacle stands in the way of doing just that. Currently, information that is shared among providers is not considered confidential. The Institute of Medicine has called on Congress to knock down this barrier by providing legal protection for information collected to advance patient safety research and education. This bill would accomplish this goal — a goal the nation’s hospitals strongly support."
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