COMMENTARY

March 13

New efforts are under way to increase patient safety

David I. Fallk

AMID THE gloom of the economic and health care crises facing our nation, good news is emerging for users of America’s health care system, especially in the area of patient safety.

Here’s a summary of possible changes on the horizon, which I am highlighting for readers during Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 8 to 14.

First, President Obama is keeping to his pledge to modernize record-keeping by encouraging the use of electronic systems. Studies have shown that a minority of our nation’s doctors uses such systems, yet most experts believe considerable cost-savings and, more importantly, fewer mistakes will result from expanding their use.

Insurance companies should be required to lower malpractice rates for doctors and hospitals using electronic record-keeping in exchange for the anticipated reduction in errors.

Computerization also is needed for the processing of prescriptions. For some time now, medication errors have been the leading cause of mistakes in hospitals, and reductions in those errors would save lives and money. Accuracy in ordering medications and dosages is an attainable goal.

Further, drug manufacturers need to be held to greater account, and legislative steps to do so are in the works. The pharmaceutical industry’s desire to maximize corporate profits has too often come at the expense of consumers’ safety. Drug research must be free of conflicts of interest, and negative results cannot be omitted or minimized. New laws also are curtailing drug company gifts to individual doctors, so that physicians will no longer feel pressured or beholden when they prescribe medication for their patients.

Over the past several years, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry has been widely felt in the weakening of watchdog administrative agencies, particularly the Food and Drug Administration. Now, Congress is in the process of undoing administrative regulations that were designed to prevent victims of unsafe drugs or medical devices from suing for damages. This practice had shifted the financial burdens of negligence and deliberate conduct from the wrongdoers to the victims and often the taxpayers. New laws and regulations removing immunity will go a long way toward restoring accountability for dangerous medical products.

Also in the works are programs that will compare the efficacy of medications for various illnesses. With this information, doctors will know if they can prescribe less expensive drugs, many that can be obtained in generic forms, rather than the new, more expensive medications that have no better track record.

Lastly, we soon will be getting a new annual report from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority on errors in the state’s hospitals. For each year since reporting began, the total number of occurrences and “serious events,” which result in injury or death, has increased. In 2007, the last year for which PSA statistics are available, there were 7,277 serious events recorded. In contrast, there were only 1,617 medical malpractice lawsuits filed in 2007, reflecting a 40 percent drop in annual case filings since 2002, according to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, there are still efforts under way to limit the rights of victims of medical negligence. Our state Legislature is being asked to give special privileges like immunity to health care providers for doing what they are already ethically and morally required to do – tell the truth to their patients when things go wrong.

Hopefully, by the time Patient Safety Awareness Week rolls around again next year, the reforms that protect patients first and reduce costs will be enacted, and proposals that diminish accountability will be consigned to the dustbin of bad ideas.

David I. Fallk is a Scranton attorney and president of The Committee for Justice for All, Kingston.