Personal Injury Law

Chicago Doctors Raise Awareness About Medical Errors

By Jamie G. Goldstein

Last week I posted about how the medical community needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for the alarming rates of medical errors that still occur every day in the interest of openness and transparency between doctors and patients. Now, some Chicago doctors are working with victims of medical error and their families to try to reduce these risks. The federal government is providing the funding for the project but two Illinois doctors have personally donated $100,000 to help publicize a documentary about a 15-year-old teenager who died after receiving elective surgery, putting a human face on the tragedy caused by preventable medical mistakes.

A three year project is now in the works to study the University of Illinois Medical Center's 'seven pillars' approach to addressing medical errors. The 'seven pillars' system identifies incidents where medical mistakes have occurred, analyzes the root cause of those mistakes, and implements systematic reform. The system advocates appropriate disclosure of errors and typically settles with the victims or their families out of court. The project aims to look at whether or not rates of medical errors are reduced and what the overall effect is on healthcare costs.

Proponents of the program are hoping to institute it in 9 other hospitals in the Chicagoland area in 3 years, including 4 of those hospitals in the next 18 months. The results of the study won't be available for at least 2 years, but hopefully the results will show that this increased transparency will make patients safer as well as improve the relationship between doctors and patients.

Full post as published by Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer on October 20, 2010 (boomark / email).