Question

You are the health information manager at General Hospital. Your in-house counsel has been contacted by an attorney for a former patient of the hospital whose inpatient hospitalization resulted in some harm to the patient. That harm was documented in an incident report prepared by hospital staff. Internal legal review of the incident report indicates that the harm described by the patient’s attorney is consistent with the harm described in the incident report. Based on the conversations between General Hospital counsel and the patient’s attorney, the counsel believes a lawsuit is imminent.

1. Discuss which part of the legal process of a lawsuit you would be involved with as the health information manager.

2. What content can and/or cannot be released to the patient’s attorney and what legislation may govern this process and content release?

Answer 1

The actual intention of incident report was to identify patient harms caused by the health care staff and increase patient safety

1.As an health information mananger to be effectively avoid future errors that can cause patient harm improvements must be made on the underlying,more common problems most often associated.we can discuss regarding the which type of incident that has been occurred to the patient during the hospital stay that leads to harm the patient such as medication error, fall, injury or even sometimes cultural difference of patient and hospital policy etc

*Discuss with the cousel regarding the legal formalities such as giving compensation to the patient according to the hospital policy,staff development programme,etc or even suspension or termination of the staff in accordance with the incident performed etc

2.The incident reports which were filed in each and every organization is highly confidential and cannot be used against the nurse practotioner in a lawsuit

*We can discuss the cousel regarding the content release to terminate any legal liability by giving compensation accordance with the harm caused to the patient.