Patient advocacy reporting system may reduce cost of orthopedic malpractice claims
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Key takeaways:
- The Patient Advocacy Reporting System reduced the cost of malpractice claims for high-risk clinicians in an orthopedic practice network.
- The system reduced malpractice claims cost by 83% per high-risk clinician.
Adoption and implementation of a patient advocacy reporting program was associated with a significant decrease in the cost of malpractice claims for high-risk clinicians in an orthopedic practice network, according to published results.
The Patient Advocacy Reporting System (PARS), designed by the Vanderbilt Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is a tiered intervention model that helps institutions identify and regulate clinicians, procedures and outcomes associated with patient complaints and malpractice claims, according to the study.
Researchers performed a retrospective cohort study that analyzed the impact of PARS on patient complaints and the cost of malpractice claims at a single U.S. orthopedic practice network from 2004 to 2020.
The mean of patient complaint reports per year increased from 101 reports in 2008 to 206 reports in 2020. Researchers noted 42 clinicians from the practice had high PARS index scores, representing a higher risk of complaints and claims.
Overall, implementation of PARS was associated with an 83% reduction in malpractice claims cost per high-risk clinician and an 87% reduction in mean annual claims cost per clinician for the entire practice.
Clinicians who identified as high risk accounted for $95,592 in malpractice claims per clinician before the implementation of PARS and $16,368 per clinician after the implementation of PARS. Researchers also found the 3-year mean malpractice claims cost per insured clinician was $12,088 before the implementation of PARS and was $1,586 after 12 years of PARS.
“The successful implementation of a peer-driven tiered intervention for high-risk clinicians in a large, single practice setting requires essential infrastructure elements to elevate professional accountability, such as establishing PARS champions and peer messengers, an office of patient affairs and integration into the onboarding process,” the researchers wrote in the study.
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