By
In responding to dysfunctional systems, America instinctively turns to “more regulation” (Exhibit A: today’s Wall Street). But regulation can, and often does, go too far, and – in patient safety – I believe that it now has.
Note that this comes from someone who believes that health care was under-regulated
until recently, not a popular viewpoint (just more mavericky behavior,
I guess). But you must admit that it was rather odd that until 5 years
ago, I was more likely to have my order read back when I called my
Chinese takeout restaurant than when I called my hospital ward with a
complex medication order. (Parenthetically, the reason for this
disconnect is that my takeout restaurant has a more powerful business
case to avoid screw-ups – they lose a customer – than does my
hospital). So now there is a Joint Commission requirement to perform
“read-backs” of important verbal communications. And it’s hard to
question the need for regulation when a prescription that said, “Inject
10U Insulin,” could be followed without question, despite the fact that
such orders have been mistaken for “100 Insulin” thousands of times,
leading to scores of patient deaths.
I reviewed the first 5 years of the patient safety field a few years ago. In an article in Health Affairs,
I opined that increased regulatory/accreditation pressure had been the
most potent force for change in the first years of the safety
revolution:
Because physicians remain highly
individualistic (which causes them to resist regulatory solutions and
standardization), and hospitals continue to lack a robust set of
incentives to drive patient safety, regulatory solutions have arguably
been the most important early step, particularly when it comes to
procedural safety (creating safe systems, standardization, and
redundancies) in hospitals.
