Mistakes happen - they happen in everyday life and they happen in hospitals.  I know of no person who ever intentionally intended that a mistake hurt someone while rendering health care.  People that are attracted to the health care profession are, at least to soem degree, altruistic - they care.  I think we can all agree on that whether you are a patient, doctor, nurse or medical malpractice lawyer.

An article in the Associate Press titled "Saying'sorry' pays off for U. of Michigan doctors" is a terrific article that lays out the framework for a program that simply shows that telling the truth and offering compensation before being sued saves can lead to "money, time and feelings."

Not all agree of course.  Some say that admitting mistakes will be used against them in court to prove that they are liable for medical malpractice.  This strikes me as self-serving and deceptive.  If you have made a mistake you should fess-up to it, accept the consequences and move on.  I have settled medical malpractice cases where the health care facility and / or the doctor have admitted their mistakes that harmed a patient.  The patient was compansated and all went on with their lives.

The article quotes David Studdert of Harvard University saying that a review of published studies shows about 181,000 people are severely hurt each year as a result of mistakes at U.S. hospitals but only about 30,000 file legal claims.  Furthermore Studdert says that many people don't sue because they don't discover they're victims of malpractice. 

So what happens if every incident of medical malpractice was told to the vistim or their families.  Medical malpractice rates would skyrocket.  Studdert wrote in a 2007 article in the journal "Health Affairs." The spread of disclosure, the article said, could cause malpractice costs to rise from $5.8 billion now to between $7 billion and $11.3 billion a year.  The next question is - SO WHAT?

The answer of course is that physicians would have to pay more - perhaps much more in medical malpractice premiums.  However, for the first time in history, the true scope of mecical malpractice in the United States might be known and trends and practice models analyzed and medical mistakes might be for the first time addressed in a meaningful way.

That is a goal that we should be all concerned with.

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