The hospital is implementing a new incident management system, called UHC Patient Safety Net. It is affiliated with a Patient Safety Organization (PSO). The benefits of participating in a PSO are:
"PSOs serve as independent, external experts who can collect, analyze, and aggregate PSWP locally, regionally, and nationally to develop insights into the underlying causes of patient safety events. Communications with PSOs are protected to allay fears of increased risk of liability because of collection and analysis of patient safety events.
The protections of the Patient Safety Rule enable PSOs that work with multiple providers to routinely aggregate the large number of patient safety events that are needed to understand the underlying causes of patient harm from adverse events and to develop more reliable information on how best to improve patient safety.
The uniform Federal protections that apply to a provider's relationship with a PSO are expected to remove significant barriers that can deter the participation of health care providers in patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, such as fear of legal liability or professional sanctions."
Medical Malpractice Awards by Specialty
"Across specialties, 7.4% of physicians annually had a claim, whereas 1.6% made an indemnity payment. There was significant variation across specialties in the probability of facing a claim, ranging annually from 19.1% in neurosurgery, 18.9% in thoraciccardiovascular surgery, and 15.3% in general surgery to 5.2% in family medicine, 3.1% in pediatics, and 2.6% in psychiatry."
"Across specialties, the mean indemnity payment was $274,887, and the median was $111,749. The difference between the mean and median payment reflects the rightskewed payment distribution. Specialties that were most likely to face indemnity claims were often not those with the highest average payments. For example, the average payment for neurosurgeons ($344,811) was less than the average payment for pathologists ($383,509) or for pediatricians ($520,924), even though neurosurgeons were several times more likely to face a claim in a year."
