IACT Program..I really hope that this idea is embraced, as well. If physicians, lawyers and med mal carriers take the lead that this is the right thing to do, perhaps we will move along a little faster….Please contact Jessica if you would like your hospital to be a leader in best practices and allow your physicians to talk with families when an adverse medical event occurs…don’t strip them of their humanity which occurred in our case. Humanity builds relationships and trust. 

Dr.Jessica Scott is a colleague of one of Justin’s IHI Forum Scholarship winners who writes to me about this new collaborative,  ”In short, Dr. Scott is both a lawyer and a doctor who has developed a program designed to allow doctors and victims in adverse outcome events to come together and talk through a form of mediated legal interactions to discover what happened, get both parties true healing, and prevent these events from happening in the future.” I will have the opportunity to  meet with Jessica as she’ll be attending the Institute for Healthcare Improvement forum in December with me. Please join our efforts to change for the better and get involved!

Letter from this new program administrator:

Dear Dale,

We are deeply committed to increasing disclosure and transparency around medical errors want to offer our sincerest apology that the medical care for you son was not safer.

You have been an amazing force in increasing awareness and driving the patient safety movement forward and for that, all Americans should be deeply appreciative.

I wanted to share our project with you so that you can see one of the possibilities for increasing disclosure and transparency, one that we feel has tremendous breakthrough potential.  The IACT Program allows patients/families to sit down together in a safe and supportive environment to allow full disclosure and transparency around medical errors so that individuals can have healing and closure and so that we can learn from these events to prevent recurrence.  We need to increase disclosures in order to improve processes and systems to improve patient safety.  Unless there is a safe and effective forum, however, this will not happen routinely.  Our model uses specially trained Collaborative Law attorneys to represent patient/families and doctors/hospitals.  These are settlement experts who advocate for their client regarding their clients particular needs (information, an apology, to participate in efforts to prevent recurrence, to start a foundation or name a playroom after their child - the possibilities are endless).  These attorneys cannot take the case to court in the parties reach an impasse though in the family law setting there is a 95% settlement rate at a fraction of the cost, with parties feeling very positively about the process.  Using Collaborative Law in the health care arena combined with the disclosure-and-offer type program, such as the one at the University of Michigan, holds tremendous breakthrough potential to resolve conflict in a way that better meets the needs of those involved while at the same time greatly enhances our patient safety improvement efforts since medical personnel will increase their transparency around adverse outcomes.

We would so appreciate it if you would take a brief look at our “About Us” video using the link below or via our website.  I would love to know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpf_gaABrI&feature=feedlik

Thank you for all your continued efforts, we are with you!

Jessica Scott

Jessica S. Scott, M.D., J.D.

Director of Healthcare ADR Innovation

Carolina Dispute Settlement Services

Main: 919-755-4646

Direct: 919-573-4861

Fax:  919-755-4644

jessica@iactprogram.com

www.IACTProgram.com