Approximately one in four (26 percent) malpractice claims related to surgery involve one or more communication errors, according to the "Malpractice Risks in Communication Failures: 2015 Annual Benchmarking Report".
The report was published by CRICO Strategies, a division of the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions. This year, CRICO Strategies published its comparative benchmarking report on how specific weaknesses in communication impact patient safety.
For the 2015 report, CRICO analyzed more than 23,000 medical malpractice claims and lawsuits filed between 2009 and 2013 in which a patient experienced some degree of harm. Of the cases analyzed, 1,959 cases involved surgery.
Below are five findings related to communication failures and surgery from the report.
1. Among surgery malpractices cases, half involved outpatients.
2. Roughly one-third (34 percent) of the cases resulted in a high-severity injury and 14 percent resulted in a patient death.
3. The factors most often cited in surgery malpractice cases include inadequate informed consent (23 percent), communication failures among providers regarding a patient's condition (19 percent) and unsympathetic responses to patient complaints (13 percent).
4. All total, 48 percent of the surgical cases analyzed involved provider-provider communication errors. Surgical specialties with the highest share of communication errors between providers include cardiac surgery (64 percent), general surgery (61 percent) and vascular surgery (53 percent).
5. Sixty-three percent of the surgical cases analyzed involved provider-patient communication errors. Surgical specialties with the highest share of communication errors between providers and patients include plastic surgery (74 percent), urology (74 percent), orthopedics (65 percent) and neurosurgery (65 percent).
"Surgical teams that master the ability to respectfully convey and receive information with patients before surgery, team members during surgery and subsequent providers after surgery establish a model for colleagues from all disciplines," according to the report. "Nurturing communication skills demonstrates a commitment to ensuring that the patient and his or her providers know what they need to know when they need to know it."
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