Disclosure gap is apparent with docs
When asked about attitudes toward when and how to disclose, the gap between risk managers and physicians becomes more apparent, with physicians sometimes more enthusiastic, says Thomas H. Gallagher, MD, assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He presented survey results recently at the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) annual meeting.
Regarding whether near misses should be disclosed to patients, 30% of physicians say yes, but only 19% of risk managers answer affirmatively. Seventy-seven percent of physicians and 74% of risk managers endorse disclosing minor errors to patients. For serious errors, 98% of both groups support disclosure.
The results suggest that some of the efforts to push full disclosure have been more successful with physicians than with risk managers. For instance, 64.6% of physicians agree or strongly agree that disclosing a serious error will make the patient less likely to file a lawsuit — a fundamental argument in favor of disclosure — while fewer risk managers (58.1%) feel the same way.
On the other hand, it seems that physicians can come up with more excuses for not disclosing the error in a particular situation. When posed with list of potential reasons for not disclosing, physicians consistently were more open to using them. For instance, 30.3% of physicians said they would be less likely to disclose a serious error to the patient if he or she felt the patient did not want to know, compared to only 19% of risk managers. Nearly a quarter of physicians, 23.2%, said they would be less likely to disclose if the patient was unaware that the error happened, compared to only 8.5% of risk managers. Thinking that the physician may get sued would make 23.7% of them less likely to disclose, but it would only discourage 2.5% of risk managers.
The patient's likely inability to understand the information would make 60.6% of physicians and 47.2% of risk managers less likely to disclose.
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