Sorry Works! and Leading Med-Mal Defense Firm Join Forces to Teach Disclosure and Apology

The Sorry Works! Coalition is pleased to announce its collaborative relationship with Stevens & Lee's healthcare, litigation, and risk management team to provide exceptional education and training in disclosure, effective communication, and event management, which can lead to patient satisfaction and professional liability risk reduction. Stevens & Lee is one of the 200 largest law firms in the United States. Their healthcare, litigation, and risk management team is a large legal-and-risk consulting practice with a national niche in litigation and risk reduction strategies for physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers. The Sorry Works! Coalition is combining its expertise in educational endeavors and facilitation related to disclosure with Stevens & Lee's expertise in risk reduction with strategies executed by a complete team of legal and risk management professionals.

"Disclosure is an extremely hot topic in healthcare and insurance, and through this partnership with Sorry Works!, we will provide the training tools and consulting to help people learn disclosure and apology the right way," said James W. Saxton, chair of Stevens & Lee's Healthcare Litigation Group.

The Sorry Works! Coalition and Stevens & Lee will work together to provide excellent training and program implementation for physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers that covers all the angles on disclosure and apology, from legal and insurance issues to cultural and ethical concerns. The program will include educational presentations to introduce disclosure, communication skill development workshops, and development of an organization-wide training program and support programs.

This collaborative relationship has been created to provide physicians and healthcare organizations with all the components of a true disclosure program from education, training, policies, procedures, monitoring, and execution. Often times, fear of the legal ramifications of disclosure is a roadblock to effective disclosure. Stevens & Lee provides the information and tools to move past these barriers.

"So often people automatically assume that all defense lawyers are opposed to apology and disclosure, but this is not the case. Stevens & Lee is one of the nation's leading med-mal defense firms, and we are very excited to be teaming with them to teach apology and disclosure," said Doug Wojcieszak, founder and spokesperson for the Sorry Works! Coalition. "This partnership combines the legal and risk management expertise of Stevens & Lee with the presence of Sorry Works! to create a dynamic team that will provide a suite of teaching products for healthcare, insurance, and legal professionals."

The Sorry Works! Coalition is the nation's leading advocacy organization for disclosure and apology after adverse medical events. Doug Wojcieszak leads the organization and has given presentations on apology and disclosure to thousands of healthcare and insurance professionals around the United States. The Sorry Works! Coalition is dedicated to helping medical, insurance, and legal organizations embrace transparency and implement successful disclosure and apology programs.

Stevens & Lee is a firm of more than 180 attorneys and 30 non-lawyer professionals, including risk management professionals, and is among the 200 largest law firms in the nation. James W. Saxton, Esq. leads Stevens & Lee's risk reduction work, with 25 years of experience in working on healthcare risk management and loss control issues for physicians and organizations throughout the country.

If you want information on how your organization can benefit from this relationship, please contact Doug Wojcieszak at doug@sorrywork.net (618-559-8168) or James W. Saxton at jws@stevenslee.com (717-399-6639).

Source: Sorry Works! Coalition

National Quality Forum (NQF) Announces the Release of Framework and Preferred Practices for Palliative and Hospice Care Quality

The National Quality Forum (NQF) has announced the release of the new report on a national framework and preferred practices for palliative and hospice care quality. The NQF recently identified palliative and hospice care as national priority areas for healthcare quality improvement. The report's national framework for palliative and hospice care is intended to be the first step in developing a comprehensive quality measurement and reporting system for palliative care and hospice services. The report also identifies a set of preferred practices designed to improve palliative and hospice care. The executive summary of the report and list of preferred practices are located on the NQF web site, www.qualityforum.org.

The framework is based in part on the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, issued in May 2004 by the National Consensus Project (NCP), a consortium of palliative care and hospice organizations including the Center to Advance Palliative Care. The report highlights consensus standards approved by NQF's more than 300 member organizations through its formal Consensus Development Process. As such, the voluntary consensus standards have special legal standing. NQF reports are highly influential. Two key partners in the production of this report are the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The NQF, a voluntary, not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of American healthcare, sets national priorities and goals for performance improvement, endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance, and promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs. It is based in Washington, D.C.

Source: Center to Advance Palliative Care

Low Health Literacy Puts Patients at Risk: The Joint Commission Sets Forth Solutions to National Problem

Far too often, ordinary citizens are placed at risk for unsafe care because important healthcare information is communicated using medical jargon and unclear language that exceed their literacy skills, according to a call to action released by The Joint Commission in its newest public policy white paper, "'What Did the Doctor Say?:' Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety." The paper frames the existing communications gap between patients and caregivers as a series of challenges involving literacy, language, and culture, and suggests multiple steps that need to be taken to narrow or even close this gap.

"Effective communication is a cornerstone of patient safety," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president, The Joint Commission. "If patients lack basic understanding of their conditions and the whats and whys of the treatments prescribed, therapeutic goals can never be realized, and patients may instead be placed in harm's way."

The detailed solutions developed by a special Joint Commission Expert Roundtable focus on making effective communications a priority in protecting the safety of patients, addressing patient communications needs across the spectrum of care, and pursuing public policy changes that promote better communications between healthcare practitioners and patients. Failure to provide patients with information about their care in ways that they can understand, The Joint Commission report warns, will continue to undermine other efforts to improve patient safety.

"Breakdowns in communication between patients andİcaregivers can significantly impair the ability of physicians to diagnose and treat medical problems," says Ronald M. Davis, M.D., chair of The Joint Commission Expert Roundtable on Health Literacy and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention atİHenry Ford Health System, Detroit. "Everyone who has a role in healthcare — specifically including practitioners, employers, and regulators — must work together to pursue strategies for improving communications with patients that will result in safer, more effective care."

"What is clear to you is clear to you," says Toni Cordell, Expert Panel member and nationally known speaker on the topic of health literacy, who struggles with dyslexia. "Every patient should be a full partner in his or her medical decisions. This requires crystal-clear communication that is done with compassion and mutual respect," she says.

The Joint Commission already promotes the involvement of patients in their care through its ongoing Speak Up^TM educational campaigns. In addition, expectations regarding patient engagement and involvement in care decisions are stipulated in Joint Commission accreditation standards and its National Patient Safety Goals. But health literacy problems, which often go unrecognized and unaddressed by healthcare practitioners, undermine the ability of healthcare organizations to comply with the intents of the accreditation standards and safety goals that seek to protect the safety of patients.

The Joint Commission report on strategies for addressing health literacy and protecting patient safety contains 35 specific recommendations that cover a wide range of important improvement opportunities including, among others:

• The sensitization, education, and training of clinicians and healthcare organization leaders and staff regarding health literacy issues and patient-centered communications.
  
  
• The development of patient-friendly navigational aids in healthcare facilities.
  
  
• The enhanced training and use of interpreters for patients.
  
  
• The re-design of informed consent forms and the informed consent process.
  
  
• The development of insurance enrollment forms and benefits explanations that are "client-centered."
  
  
• The use of established patient communication methods such as "teach back."
  
  
• The expanded adaptation and use of adult learning centers to meet patient health literacy needs.
  
  
• The development of patient self-management skills.
  
  
• Healthcare organization assessment of the literacy levels and language needs of the communities they serve.
  
  
• The design of public health interventions that are audience-centered and can be communicated in the context of the lives of the target population.
  
  
• The integration of the patient communication priority into emerging physician pay-for-performance programs.
  
  
• The provision of medical liability insurance discounts for physicians who apply patient-centered communication techniques.

A complete copy of The Joint Commission white paper, "'What Did the Doctor Say?:' Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety" is available at www.jointcommission.org. The report is part of a continuing series of white papers on key public policy issues that impact patient safety and healthcare quality.

Source: The Joint Commission

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