Silver lining with increased disclosure?
Executive Summary
A California hospital recently was successful in stopping an infant abduction before the kidnapper left the hospital. Hospital leaders attribute the success to a combination of good technology and staff training.
• The infant security system included an early warning alert that a baby was nearing a secure exit.
• The early warning allowed staff members to react faster than if only the exit alarm sounded.
• Staff confronted the man before he could leave the building.
Risk managers are justified in fighting to keep some documents confidential, but being forced to release them to the plaintiff does not necessarily signal a crisis for healthcare in general, says Leilani Kicklighter, RN, ARM, MBA, CPHRM, LHRM, a patient safety and risk management consultant with The Kicklighter Group in Tamarac, FL, and a past president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) in Chicago.
The overall trend to more disclosure could have a silver lining, she says. By making more patient safety and investigative documents discoverable, the courts could be doing a favor for the industry by allowing other institutions to benefit from the shared data and experiences of adverse events, Kicklighter explains.
Healthcare institutions and individual providers should tell the patient what happened, and facts should not be held back, Kicklighter says. To that extent, disclosure of factual information is not contrary to risk management ideals, she says.
"There is a school of thought, and I think it’s not unreasonable, that asks why are we keeping information from the public and other healthcare organizations when we could share information across the board and help make things safer," Kicklighter says. "That may be little comfort for a risk manager who has to turn over documents in a malpractice case, but it might not be the end of the world for the healthcare community."
