Waltham/Boston – April 18 – Led by the Massachusetts Medical Society, six health care organizations today announced the start of a major initiative to improve the medical liability system in the Commonwealth.
The new alliance has launched its effort with the release of a Roadmap to Reform, an alternative approach to medical liability intended to improve patient safety, increase transparency, reduce litigation, and cut costs to the health care system, and with the announcement that seven hospitals will participate in a pilot program this year to implement the reforms.
The alliance contains some of the most notable healthcare groups in the Commonwealth, with major teaching hospitals, statewide provider organizations, and patient advocacy groups participating. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which along with Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), had a principal role in the research effort to create the Roadmap document, is joined by Baystate Health in Springfield, the largest health care provider in Western Massachusetts; Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors; Massachusetts Hospital Association; and Medically Induced Trauma Support Services (MITSS), a nonprofit whose mission is to support patients, families, and clinicians who have been affected by adverse medical events.
The Roadmap to Reform proposes a process of Disclosure, Apology, and Offer (DA&O), an alternative to the current tort system, which many health professionals say is inefficient, drives health costs higher, and is unduly burdensome to patients, physicians, and the health care system. The DA&O approach will be instituted, beginning this year, in seven hospitals in the state to test its feasibility in different practice environments with different insurance arrangements.
“The current approach to medical liability is onerous for both patients and physicians,” said Alan Woodward, M.D., Chair of the MMS Committee on Professional Liability and a past president of the organization. “It discourages transparency, inhibits communication between caregivers and patients, burdens physicians with excessive premiums, leads to unwarranted lawsuits, and motivates physicians to practice defensive medicine. We can make the approach to medical liability much better for both patients and physicians and stop driving unnecessary costs with a new model that promotes honesty and transparency.”
Kenneth Sands, M.D., M.P.H., Senior Vice President for Health Care Quality at BIDMC, said “We are proposing to create a centralized resource to support this new model. By conducting programs in seven hospitals, specifically chosen to allow demonstration in various hospital settings and within different malpractice insurance models, we can assess impact on patient safety, malpractice claims, and overall liability costs. At the same time, we will be educating the public and the broader health care community, and thus building a foundation for medical liability reform in the Commonwealth.”
DA&O programs have been implemented in several settings outside of Massachusetts and have demonstrated success as an alternative to the current tort system. Both physicians believe that patients and clinicians will regard the DA&O model as fairer, timelier, and more supportive than the traditional response to adverse events, which is adversarial, stifles the exchange of information, and thwarts efforts to improve patient safety. They also say the model will lead to faster resolution of cases and enhanced reporting of medical errors.
How the DA&O Model Works
Under the DA&O model, healthcare professionals and institutions and their insurers disclose to patient and families when unanticipated adverse outcomes occur; investigate and explain what happened; establish systems to improve patient safety and prevent the recurrence of such incidents; and, where appropriate, apologize and offer fair financial compensation without the patient resorting to legal action. Such a system will not deny patients the right to bring legal action, but would make tort claims a last resort. Adverse events in which the provider or institution is deemed to have met the standard of care would be firmly defended.
The DA&O model, which has been highly successful at the University of Michigan Health Care System for a decade, is gaining broad support across the nation and is regarded as a successful approach to medical liability reform and patient safety by such groups as The Joint Commission, an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 19,000 health care organizations and programs in the U.S.
Seven Hospitals Will Participate in Program
The seven hospitals participating in the initiative include three from the BIDMC health system (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham, and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Milton); three from Baystate Health system in Springfield (Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, and Baystate Mary Lane Hospital in Ware); and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Effort Begun in 2010
This new effort is the result of a BIDMC/MMS collaboration begun two years ago and led by Drs. Sands and Woodward. In 2010, the two organizations received a planning grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the president’s Patient Safety and Medical Liability Initiative, to create a roadmap to advance an alternative medical liability model in the Commonwealth.
Over the next year, four physicians, Drs. Sands and Woodward, along with Drs. Peter Smulowitz and Sigall Bell, also from BIDMC, interviewed key stakeholder groups -- physicians, attorneys, legislators, public officials, patient safety experts and patient advocates. They asked them to identify obstacles in implementing such a model as well as to suggest strategies to overcome those obstacles. From that investigation, a roadmap for implementing the DA&O model in Massachusetts was developed.
Implementation of the roadmap in the Commonwealth is being supported in part by grants from the state’s three largest health insurers: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts Associated Health Plan, along with the Reliant Medical Group.
Complete List of Alliance Members
- Massachusetts Medical Society, the statewide association of physicians with nearly 24,000 members;
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, currently ranking third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide;
- Baystate Health, the largest health provider in Western Massachusetts, a Thomson Reuters top 15 healthcare system, and the Western campus of Tufts University School of Medicine;
- Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors, a public-private partnership whose mission is to improve patient safety and eliminate medical errors;
- Massachusetts Hospital Association, the voluntary, not-for-profit association of hospitals and health systems in the state;
- Medically Induced Trauma Support Services (MITSS), a nonprofit whose mission is to support patients, families, and clinicians who have been affected by adverse medical events.
Project Consultants
Consultants to the project are Dr. Woodward of the MMS; Allen Kachalia, M.D., J.D., Associate Chief Quality Officer, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Gregg Meyer, M.D., Senior Vice President for Quality and Patient Safety, Massachusetts General Hospital; Rick Boothman, J.D., Chief Risk Officer, University of Michigan Health System; and Michelle Mello, J.D., Ph.D., Professor of Law and Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health.
