DOCTORS TO SAY SORRY
By Sean Parnell

Doctors will apologise to patients for their mistakes under major reforms to the Australian health care system.

The hope is that litigation rates will drop as a result. Medical mistakes cost Australia an estimated $350 million each year and are a major factor in the rising litigation bill for governments and medical insurance companies.

The director of the federally funded National Open Disclosure Consortium, Dr Rohan Hammett, said a review completed last month found there were no legal barriers to doctors apologising.

"There is a clear distinction in law between an apology and an admission of liability," Dr Hammett said. "Saying sorry for what happened and the harm that occurred to a patient is not an admission of guilt."

The consortium, comprising members of medical boards, legal and consumer groups, governments and colleges, is expected to release its report next week.

Under the new standards, which will be tried at two metropolitan hospitals and one rural hospital, doctors will apologise and inform the patient what is being done to fix the problem.

"Most harm that occurs to patients in hospital occurs after a breakdown in the system of care, rather than specific errors by doctors or allied health professionals," Dr Hammett said.

The standards will be discussed at nationwide workshops over the next 2 months. The Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care, established by Australian health ministers in January 2000, provided $450,000 to develop the standards.

Council chairman Dr Bruce Barraclough said yesterday there was a risk of increased litigation if open disclosure was not done properly. "It's a complex thing but we feel if it's done correctly and appropriately, what we get is increased trust, reduced anger and increased safety," Dr Barraclough said.

A landmark study last year found more than 500,000 Australians were victims of medical mistakes each year, and 11,000 died as a result.
Melbourne - Herald Sun, Saturday 9th February 2002

PHILLIP DAY COMMENT: Recently during my tour of Australia, I was accused by one leading doctor of alarming the public with the figures indicating the number of deaths occurring in Australia through the actions of the healthcare system. The very next day, the Herald Sun was reporting 80,000 deaths a year as a result of iatrogenic disasters. This week in Liverpool, England, the local National Health Service Trust branded my message 'dangerous'. This is the same healthcare system in the same city which tacitly endorsed the stealing of baby's organs after their deaths by pathologists without family knowledge - a city which has seen some of the worst medical blunders the beleaguered UK has suffered to date.

Mistakes of course regrettably happen. No-one is denying this. That Australian physicians and their healthcare authorities should apologise to their patients' families is of course the very start of the process CTM strives to see implemented. A much-needed investigation is required by each nation into why indiscriminate use of especially harmful drugs on patients has not been halted, with the vital and proper nutrition simultaneously offered, tragically, it must be said, at far less profit to the authorities.