Majority of Hospitals Slow to Adopt Routine Apology Policy

http://www.insidearm.com/news/00004775-majority-of-hospitals-slow-to-adopt-routi/

Over 100 hospital officials and physicians gathered at a two-day Joint Commission seminar last month in part to explore the benefits and risks in saying, “I’m sorry.”

Currently, 30 states have signed laws that disallow apologies after alleged medical accidents as being admissible as evidence in lawsuits. And yet hospitals are still examining whether or not it’s feasible or even intelligent to add apologies to their protocols.

Some, like Dr. Steven Kraman, former chief of staff at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lexington, Ky., quoted in the American Medical News online, believes that regardless of any potential cost reduction (the idea being that an apology could just as easily result in no lawsuit), “It’s the right thing to do.”