Strategies To Reduce Care Litigations And Improve Hospital Reputation

Initiatives to Reduce Care Related Litigations

1. The hospital authority can incorporate a number if initiatives that will help in order to reduce the care related litigations and also help to develop the reputation that the hospital have lost due to certain eventful situation. The first initiative that should be taken by the authority is good documentation process which will keep all the records of the medications and the interventions taken on the patient which will help the other nurses to understand their cases. Other initiative would be the implementation of proper communication skills not only among the nurses and the patients but also among the tem members of the nurses and also among the higher officials. Risks of the treatments, benefits of the treatments alternatives, harms all should be discussed properly (Nuckols et al., 2015). A correct consultation is yet another step that should be focused by the authority. Often a patient or family member will not be able to properly describe the history o the patient which often hampers good consultation. Therefore effective initiatives must be taken by the authority to overcome it. Moreover nowadays a large number of physicians are getting g sued because of their misinterpretation of the treatment. Therefore, they should be careful enough to undergo proper clinical reason with each and every symptom clusters of the patients before proceeding with their interventions so their remains no scope of misinterpretation (Mello et al., 2014). Again there arise many situations, that cost of the healthcare services makes the HMO to restrict their resources but the entire grievances move on to the healthcare officers where the patient believe that their resources have been wasted. Therefore the physicians should entirely discuss the interventions that he need to take so that the patients and talk accordingly with the insurer and later not raising and issue with the physicians. Other initiatives would include physically attending patients rather than on phone call to reduce the chance of missing out points, proper discharge instructions, with no compromise for integrity and others. Proper well trained nurses, physician and others would be the main foundation of a litigation free working care environment ((Mello et al., 2014).

2. Physicians and the nurses should be properly trained not only in their skills but also should develop effective communication among the team members so that there remains less chance of medication or intervention error. Also evidence based techniques should be followed by them that have the highest level of authenticity. The patients and their families are other stakeholders who also need to be involved in the treatment of the patients so that they can have an entire idea about what is happening with the patients. Each and every intervention should be discussed properly with the patient’s family members so that they feel involved in the process (Renkema, Broekhuis & Ahaus, 2014). Concealing a fact from the family members result in legal obligations and therefore it should be strictly avoided. The Hospital Board members should effectively set in monitoring commissions who would regulate the different rules and systems of the organization keeping the different important laws in their minds. They should also incorporate bodies for handling their complaints reported so that they are resolved earlier. If healthcare staffs are not found to be competent enough they would be sent to training for development of their lacking skills. Insurance companies should be clearly discussed about the interventions that they would cover, the limit of each of the insurances, the type of coverage they would provide along with the other different norms (Trent et al., 2016). These should be clear as crystals so that no confusions occur among the patient’s family members, the hospital authorities and the insurers. The clearer the situations, the patients will know what they are expecting and there will be less chance of legal obligations. Healthcare law specialists are mainly involved in maintaining the legal infrastructure of any health care organizations. They mainly advise on the lettings and the leasing, planning, development as well as the construction of the environmental implications, private and also public partnerships, outsourcing, data protection and privacy along with the commercial agreements with stakeholders (Cohen et al., 2014).

Involvement of Key Stakeholders

3. The most common barrier that one can find in the implementation plan is the presence of ineffective communication. Unless the communication of the patient and their family members do not become clear, they will continue to increase the legal obligations even if different plans are finalized. In order to practice effective communication the healthcare professionals should participate in workshops and training (Xu et al. 2015). This can be done by not withholding information, not giving details in cold and tactless manner, not issuing medical terms which are not known by patients, not discussing problems in noisy areas and others. Communication often acts as a barrier and better the communication done, it would be easier to successfully implement the plans.

Another issue that may also act as a barrier in the implementation of strategies to reduce care litigations also involves the absence of proper relationship and also bonding among the different team members at both the management level and also in the team of the nurses. Until a proper relationship building and bonding occurs among the different individuals, the implementation of the strategies will always remain half hearted and will lead to major legal obligations due to arousal of confusions and also ego clashes.

Another barrier that can prove to be very important in the implementation strategy is the language barrier. It may arise in many situations where the patient or even the healthcare staffs may come from backgrounds with different languages and culture and have very difficult times in communicating. This language may act as the main constraints which often lead as the main issue in implementation of strategies (Yamin & Lander, 2015). Therefore steps should be taken in such a way so that the language barrier can be avoided with proper language assistances so that no issues may arise.

4. In order to evaluate whether the implemented strategies are properly present or not in the care setting, monitoring commissions would be set who would regularly analyze the situations ad take effective steps to ensure their initiatives are properly maintained and followed by every stakeholders. The commission should also ensure that all the measures that had been taken by the authority are applied correctly and also should make it sure that every of the stakeholders have understood their role effectively (Lee et al., 2017). Both per and post surveys should be conducted so that one can understand the positive changes that were successfully incorporated in the organization. moreover one may also conduct a patient satisfaction survey to take responses of the patient and their family members for result analysis.

References:

Nuckols, T. K., Asch, S. M., Patel, V., Keeler, E., Anderson, L., Buntin, M. B., & Escarce, J. J. (2015). Implementing computerized provider order entry in acute care hospitals in the United States could generate substantial savings to society. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 41(8), 341-AP1.

Mello, M. M., Senecal, S. K., Kuznetsov, Y., & Cohn, J. S. (2014). Implementing hospital-based communication-and-resolution programs: lessons learned in New York City. Health Affairs, 33(1), 30-38.

Mello, M. M., Boothman, R. C., McDonald, T., Driver, J., Lembitz, A., Bouwmeester, D., … & Gallagher, T. (2014). Communication-and-resolution programs: the challenges and lessons learned from six early adopters. Health Affairs, 33(1), 20-29.

Renkema, E., Broekhuis, M., & Ahaus, K. (2014). Conditions that influence the impact of malpractice litigation risk on physicians’ behavior regarding patient safety. BMC health services research, 14(1), 38.

Trent, M., Waldo, K., Wehbe?Janek, H., Williams, D., Hegefeld, W., & Havens, L. (2016). Impact of health care adversity on providers: Lessons learned from a staff support program. Journal of healthcare risk management, 36(2), 27-34.

Cohen, I. G., Amarasingham, R., Shah, A., Xie, B., & Lo, B. (2014). The legal and ethical concerns that arise from using complex predictive analytics in health care. Health affairs, 33(7), 1139-1147.

Xu, T., Wu, A. W., & Makary, M. A. (2015). The potential hazards of hospital consolidation: implications for quality, access, and price. Jama, 314(13), 1337-1338.

Yamin, A. E., & Lander, F. (2015). Implementing a Circle of Accountability: A Proposed Framework for Judiciaries and Other Actors in Enforcing Health-Related Rights. Journal of Human Rights, 14(3), 312-331.

Lee, J. S., Pérez-Stable, E. J., Gregorich, S. E., Crawford, M. H., Green, A., Livaudais-Toman, J., & Karliner, L. S. (2017). Increased Access to Professional Interpreters in the Hospital Improves Informed Consent for Patients with Limited English Proficiency. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 1-8.