New accreditation rules require hospitals to report errors to patients.

New standards requiring hospitals to report medical mistakes to victims and their families took effect July 1. Under the rules, hospitals must report mistakes or face sanctions from their national accreditation agency, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).

"These standards, in the very real sense, raise the bar of expectations for performance in the nation's hospitals, but these are standards for which we believe hospitals are well prepared," JCAHO president Dennis O'Leary said at a press conference. "Patient safety needs to be Job 1 for hospitals across the country, and that's what our standards are seeking to do."

The standards encourage hospitals to manage risk proactively by identifying dangers to patients and developing strategies to prevent errors. The new rules require hospitals' patient-safety programs to report to hospital officials, at least annually, what medical errors occurred and what actions were taken to improve safety.

In a chapter devoted to patient rights and organization ethics, the new rules include a requirement that "patients and, when appropriate, their families [be] informed about the outcomes of care, including unanticipated outcomes."

O'Leary said the intent of the standards "is for patients who are affected by harm to know about that. That's very different from gathering numbers of errors ... and hanging organizations out to dry."

The new standards respond to a 1999 Institute of Medicine study reporting that 40,000 to 98,000 people die from medical mistakes each year.

Miami attorney Gary Fox, chair of ATLA's Professional Negligence Section, said of the new rules, "The more they do to encourage health care providers to make disclosure, the better off we'll all be."

The rules could help where mistakes might not have been apparent--for example, in cases where elderly patients die after surgery, he said. But sanctions and enforcement of the rules are critical.

"They need teeth," he said. "Unless sanctions are applied [for violations], they'll be useless."

Search TRIAL, the Law Reporter, and the Advocate online

Maybe you already knew TRIAL was available online through atla.org. And maybe you knew users could access back issues dating from June 1995. But did you know that TRIAL is now searchable?

Now, members registered on atla.org can search ATLA's entire Web site to find articles on any topic, from automobile accidents to wrongful discharge. With a simple, user-friendly search engine, the site offers a fist, simple, and inexpensive way to research issues important to your next case.

And there's more good news. Because the Law Reporter (beginning with the May 1993 issue) and the Advocate (beginning with the June 1995 issue) are also available online, a search will yield articles from these important ATLA publications as well. The Law Reporter's online case summaries include the same content as the original print version, so you'll receive the same vital information on damages, experts, and plaintiff counsel that appears in the paper version each month. You can also order documents from cases online.

So don't wait. If you're a member and already a registered atla.org user, start searching the publications online. If you're not registered, visit ATLA's public page at www.atla.org and see what you're missing.