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Data are everywhere these days, and you can put it to work for you. Health care providers accumulate huge volumes of data, and some risk managers are learning that the strategic use of that information can improve patient safety, reduce costs, and reduce liability risks.
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With the Obama administration offering up to $19 billion in incentives as part of the federal stimulus package for medical providers to go digital, and the goal for every American to have an electronic health record by 2014, the potential for data breaches dramatically increases.
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Medical malpractice claims will moderately increase in 2010, partly because claims increase when people are struggling through a tough economy and money is tight. Your med-mal premiums or self-insurance risks are going to increase also, maybe in double digits, reversing the more positive trends of recent years.
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The recent action by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) declaring some medical errors "never events" events that should never happen could prompt an increase in malpractice claims, says Erik A. Johnson, FCAS, MAAA, assistant director and actuary with Aon Global Risk Consulting in Chicago.
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When a co-defendant starts saying everything is the hospital's fault, it might be because you have deeper pockets. Ward off some of that finger-pointing by making sure the doctors have enough coverage to pay the tab themselves.
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Lewis A. Bartell, JD, a partner with Kaplan Belsky Ross Bartell in Garden City, NY, says he has seen co-defendants turn on each other many times in his 20 years of litigating medical malpractice and negligence actions, representing hospitals, nurses, physicians, and other health care providers. He says risk managers should consider potential difficulties with a co-defendant as soon as a case arises.
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It may seem counterintuitive to suggest hiring more nurses when a health care provider already is struggling with tight budgets and a bad economy, but some experts say increased nursing staff can yield significant patient safety improvements that will more than pay for the personnel costs. The key, they say, is to look beyond the initial expenditure to the savings that accrue downstream.
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Brace yourself for more lawsuits. Television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits increased from about 10,150 ads in 2004 to more than 156,000 ads in 2008 nearly a 1,400% increase in four years, according to a new study.
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Now that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released an interim final rule implementing the breach notification provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, risk managers and compliance officers have been huddling with their teams (including their attorneys) to determine exactly how it will impact them and what steps they must take to be in compliance.
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You'd think that any hospital in the country would be pleased to have its nurses come forward when they notice a physician practicing in a manner that is less than optimal for his or her patients. In fact, a number of states even allow the sharing of protected health information if it's necessary for such whistle-blowers to state their case.
