lawsuit

Earlier in the week we talked specifically about the risk that electronic records could pose to patients, especially when hospitals or medical providers have some kind of hybrid system in place between electronic and paper reocrds. This is such a big concern because of the federal government’s push to get more health care providers to use electronic records, but what if hospitals adopt faulty or shoddy systems?

Ultimately, it will be a hospital’s responsibility to adopt an electronic record-keeping system that allow physicians to successfully and safely treat patients. If a hospital chooses a system that is somehow subpar, it would be negligent if it did not find work-arounds that made up for the system’s deficiencies.

Unfortunately, it seems that some of these systems are clunky or are deficient in some way. Though many doctors say they do not want to go back to paper records, they do want better computer systems.

Most fields are always changing, and medicine is no different. What is changing within medicine, however, is not necessarily techniques and skills that will reduce serious medical errors or fatal hospital negligence. Instead, it is often finding new medicines or new ways of performing procedures. Yet many of the problems of medical malpractice remain.

So, what could get the medical community to change? There are some people who believe that hospitals, physicians and other medical professionals would be more likely to delve into safety issues if they were subject to more high-publicity, costly malpractice lawsuits. There is even historical evidence that backs this presumption up.

In the early 1980s, anesthesiologists were getting slammed by a series of medical malpractice lawsuits. Time and time again they were found liable for serious medical errors, so the American Society of Anesthesiologists looked into what had been harming patients. After making some changes to working hours and monitoring, updated machines, and created safety devices, anesthesiologists have seen a tremendous increase in safety.

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