Becker's Hospital Review

41 FINANCE CMO / CARE DELIVERY What Patients Really Want Physicians to Do After a Medical Error By Mackenzie Bean A er a medical error leads to a serious injury, patients and family members want physicians to better communicate the hospital's efforts to prevent a similar error from occurring again, according to a study pub- lished in JAMA Internal Medicine. For the study, researchers interviewed 27 pa- tients, three family members and 10 staff members from three hospitals with communi- cation-and-resolution programs in place to ad- dress medical errors. Every patient interviewed either accepted a malpractice settlement or were injured too long ago to file suit. Here are six study findings. 1. Twenty-seven of 30 patients and family members received compensation. 2. Eighteen patients continued to seek care at the hospital where the mistake took place. 3. Patient satisfaction was highest aer med- ical errors when hospital communication was friendly and included compensation. 4. Patients and family members demon- strated a strong desire to be heard aer a medical error took place and expected the physician involved with the case to listen to their feelings about the situation. 5. ey also wanted to know how the hos- pital would prevent errors in the future, but only six of 30 family members and patients received this information. 6. irty-five of 40 respondents thought it was helpful to have plaintiffs' lawyers join conversations about the errors. "When things go wrong in the hospital, doctors tend to be focused on doing what they do best: conveying medical information and treating the patient," senior study author Michelle Mello, PhD, a law professor at Stanford (Calif.) University, told Reuters. "ey may not realize that what many pa- tients and families need is for them to stop talking and listen attentively to what families have to say about how the adverse event affected them, without redirecting the conversation to clinical issues." n 66% of Patients With Chronic Conditions Would Pay for Support Between Physician Visits, Survey Finds By Jessica Kim Cohen T wo-thirds of consumers indicat- ed the U.S. healthcare system does not effectively help those with chronic illnesses manage their conditions, according to a West report. The report, titled "Prioritizing the Patient Experience," was compiled from two recent surveys on patient satisfaction. The first, conducted by Kelton Global on behalf of West, surveyed 1,010 U.S. adults about their patient experience. The second, administered by West, sur- veyed 236 healthcare providers. The majority of patients with chronic conditions — 66 percent — said they would be willing to pay up to $10 per month for additional support between physician visits. Forty-sev- en percent of patients with chronic conditions reported they search out providers who communicate with pa- tients between appointments. Sixty-six percent of patients with chronic illnesses also indicated they would be more likely to stay with a healthcare provider who monitors their personal data to inform remote interventions. n Cloth Skullcaps Mitigate OR Contamination More Effectively Than Disposable Headgear By Anuja Vaidya A study published online by the Journal of the American College of Surgeons examined three common styles of surgical headgear: disposable shower cap-like bouffant hats, disposable surgical skullcaps with paper sides and home-laundered reus- able cloth skullcaps. Researchers studied the three types of headgear in an operating room under different conditions. For each style of headgear, the operating room team performed a one-hour mock operation, which included gowning, gloving, passing surgical instruments, and leaving and reentering the OR as well as performing electrocautery on a piece of raw steak to generate particles that are discharged into the air during procedures. Each type of headgear was tested four times, twice each at two different hospitals. Researchers found during the mock operations the bouffant hats and the disposable surgical skullcaps had similar airborne particle counts. Cloth skullcaps showed lower parti- cle counts and significantly lower mi- crobial shedding at the sterile field compared to bouffant hats. The researchers also tested the fabric of each headgear style for permeabili- ty, penetration and porosity. The bouf- fant hats' fabric showed greater per- meability than either of the other caps. "Based on these experiments, sur- geons should be allowed to wear either a bouffant hat or a skullcap, al- though cloth skull caps are the thickest and have the lowest permeability of the three types we tested," said Troy A. Markel, MD, principal investigator and assistant professor of pediatric surgery at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. However, Dr. Markel cautioned that the need to wash cloth skullcaps is a disadvantage. "Most hospitals don't have facilities to launder them, and surgeons may not launder their skullcaps every day," he said. "There needs to be a way to guarantee that reusable skullcaps are clean." n

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