Service Recovery: 'HOW TO' GUIDE FOR DISCLOSURE AND APOLOGY

Disclosure and apology are hot topics in the health care industry, and there is no sign of the heat waning. In fact, with patient-focused health care initiatives and patient safety initiatives, the authors anticipate that disclosure and apology post-adverse event will only get hotter.

Transparency, benchmarking, hospital and doctor ratings, and pay-for-performance initiatives only make disclosure and apology more significant in the health care industry. Certainly, disclosure and apology are a part of patient satisfaction. By disclosure and apology, we are really talking about communication post-adverse event. Did you talk to the patient and/or family after the unexpected outcome occurred? Did you empathize with them? Did you explain to them, clinically, what occurred and why? When these conversations do not take place after an adverse event, patients and their families may misconstrue the silence as concern or guilt on your part. They also will often seek out a lawyer to fill in the gaps and answer their unanswered questions. It is why disclosure and apology post-adverse event are key risk reduction strategies for physicians.

We are often asked, "How this can be so – isn’t discussing with a patient what happened and saying I’m sorry going to lead to a lawsuit – it’s just like admitting that I committed malpractice. In the past, my attorney has always told me to keep quiet after an unexpected outcome occurs." The truth is that when done in the right way, communication post-adverse event can actually prevent or help in the defense of a lawsuit. The key is in doing it right. In this article, we will provide you with the tools to get past many of the barriers to disclosure and apology as well as provide you with an introductory "how to" – when it actually happens