Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of error and other types of unnecessary harm that often lead to adverse patient events.
The “To Err Is Human” report, published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1999, called for a national effort to make healthcare safer.The results of the book's research highlights that errors occur in healthcare… errors that cause injury and death (directly and indirectly). The message in To Err Is Human was that preventing death and injury from medical errors requires dramatic, system wide changes.
The patient safety movement is about the effort to make that change.
Medical Professional Liability Insurance carriers, like The Doctors Company, are committed to being a part of that change.
The Doctors Company has developed a team of Risk Management Experts.
Policyholders with The Doctors Company have access to a wealth of resources, including industry-leading programs that help doctors and practices implement effective protocols, resulting in significantly fewer allegations of malpractice. And the industry’s largest claims database gives them an understanding of lawsuits against doctors. This data and focus enables them to anticipate trends and implement patient safety tools to help reduce risk.
There are other patient safety companies (like OmniSure) that provide support and resources to assist healthcare organizations in these efforts. These are important aspects of healthcare organizations. OmniSure focuses on proactively protecting patient and caregiver safety for many of the settings and levels of care we insure.
To support the year-round efforts of our policyholders and improve care and reduce risk, we continue recommend carriers that partner with patient safety organizations like OmniSure Consulting Group.
OmniSure is a company with clinical risk and patient safety specialists that highlight important patient safety initiatives, spreading awareness through tips, tools, and education. We also work with carriers like Doctors Professional Liability (DPL). DPL provides risk management through The Sullivan Group, a leading provider of patient safety, risk management, and performance solutions for healthcare professionals.
They have recently introduced an online education program consisting of 3-5 courses tailored to each specialty.
A premium credit of one percent will be extended based on the completion of each recommended course, up to five percent annually.
Together, The Doctor's Insurance Agency and its carrier partners work with patient safety organization to further the mission of The Doctors Company, which is the advancement of the practice of good medicine.
Medical group practice protocols with established participation in patient safety education programs can qualify for medical malpractice discounts.
In hard markets, it can be difficult to find justifiable methods of reducing medical malpractice premium. Awareness and adherence to strong patient safety principles is important to the practice of good medicine and can help contain the high cost of malpractice insurance.
The Doctors Insurance Agency is proud to partner with one of these leaders in patient safety to help your organization manage and practice good medicine.