Leopold-Michael Marzi
Vienna General Hospital, Austria
Title: Health care safety and not only patient safety: A new approach at the vienna general hospital
Biography
Biography: Leopold-Michael Marzi
Abstract
We should use the word health care safety instead of patient safety, because in case of malpractice the people who are in charge of treatment of patients can be a second victim. Very often health professionals do not know how to react in case of malpractice or emergency from a legal point of view. The patient or his family contacts a lawyer immediately, but who helps the health professionals to cope with the case? The Vienna General Hospital (VGH) is one of the biggest in the world. In 1999 the project risk management was initiated by the legal department. The aim at this time was minus 50% concerning cases and more than 50% less costs in the next 10 years (2000-2010). 2010 the aim was reached and the positive trend is still continuing, but how did it work? The VGH in cooperation with the Vienna Insurance Group created a complete new form of quick help in case of emergency the so-called legal emergency kit. It represents a handy plastic case on which a paragraph is stamped. A special checklist tells what to do in case of legal emergency. The legal practitioner of the VGH can be called at any time via mobile phone. The malpractice cases are analyzed in a Retrospective Damage Analysis (RDA), which helps to avoid errors and damages in the future. The specific impetus for instituting RDA was that two nearly identical malpractice cases occurred in the years 1993 and 1998 in two different departments of the hospital. The RDA helps both the legal department and clinical departments to learn from errors and to direct appropriate measures for improvement. Every hospital could use the LEK and the RDA with a few modifications.