Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
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This may be the only way to fix a systemic malpractice problem that has plagued the practice of medicine for many years. But there are ways to make the process work more smoothly for everyone involved in the interim. Talk with your insurance agent or carrier to better understand your cooperation clause or any other stipulations about how you could handle communication with patients who've suffered from adverse events. If made possible in your malpractice coverage, try to follow an early disclosure, early intervention claims model, where you call your agent to discuss the issue first, and then disclose the incident to the patient and family and offer your sympathy. Not only does this model help improve your relationship with Medical Malpractice MM 3 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A Y 2 0 1 6 In May 2015, a patient was admitted to a Connecticut hospital to remove a lesion on her 8 th rib. Before the surgery, the radiologists had marked the site of the lesion by inserting metal coils around the rib and injecting a dye into the skin and surrounding soft tissue. After the surgery was finished, the patient woke up and immediately noticed pain in the region where the surgery took place. The surgeons ordered an x-ray and saw that the metal markers were still in place and that a portion of the 7 th rib had been removed instead of the 8 th . An assistant who also saw the X-ray told the patient that the wrong rib was removed. However, the surgeon allegedly falsely told the patient just a few minutes later that he had not removed enough of the 8 th rib during surgery and, for that reason alone, she would need to undergo an additional procedure. Later that day, the correct rib and the marking coils were removed, court documents state. The hospital denied the allegations, saying that the patient was told immediately after the surgery that the wrong rib was removed and that she agreed to anoth- er procedure to remove the correct rib; however, the patient says the surgeons lied to her and tried to cover up their mistake. She is now suing the hospital and her clinicians. — Frank Jones COVER-UP? Was This Surgeon Caught in a Lie?