Case Study: Disclosure Of Physician Information

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Disclosure of Physician Information HCA305: The U.S. Health Care System Instructor Dolores Thomas Brooke Hoefling September 20, 2010 Disclosure of Physician Information The issue presented is that of physician's information. Physician's private information is being made available for health care consumers to view at their leisure. It is allowing consumers to make the decision to either see the physician or not based on his or her past and present records. I feel that its private information but if the physician's records aren't viable, we as a consumer need to be aware as to why. Physicians, more than any other professional ,including priest, minister, attorney, and engineer, will have a profound impact on our health,…show more content…
An adverse event is an injury caused by medical management rather than the underlying condition of the patient. An adverse event attributable to error is a "preventable adverse event." Not all errors result in adverse events; sometimes a mistake is made but the patient does not suffer harm as a result. And not all adverse events are caused by error. For example, side effects of appropriately prescribed and administered chemotherapy are an example of adverse events not caused by error (Hoy, 2006). Medical errors should be disclosed to patients for a number of reasons. Because of their fiduciary relationship with patients, physicians have an ethical responsibility to disclose errors to them. To withhold this information undermines the public trust in medicine and damages the therapeutic relationship between physician and patient. In fact, patients may be caused additional, avoidable harm by failure to disclose because they lack information that would allow them to receive appropriate treatment should further complications arise (Hoy, 2006). In a recent survey, 77% of hospitals indicated that malpractice fear was the principal barrier to error disclosure. Malpractice liability and insurance costs have become so high that they have caused physicians to move their practices to other states and, in some states, institute work stoppages. Although physicians may want to do the right thing by disclosing errors to patients and apologizing for harm that occurred as a result of an error, physicians fear that an apology would lead to higher malpractice premiums and be admissible in court, should the patient decide to sue (Hoy, 2006). However, research on the relationship between error disclosure and malpractice liability has not found

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