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VIDEO: Transparency improves patient care, builds just culture

PHILADELPHIA — While strategies such as public reporting, transparency and using clinical decision support and electronic health records are necessary and effective in improving patient care, there is also a need to improve the culture in medicine, according to a presenter at the ACP Internal Medicine Meeting.

The best way to manage medical errors when they occur is to be open and honest with patients, Allen Kachalia, MD, JD, general internist, academic hospitalist and senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told Healio Primary Care Today.

“It’s our ethical mandate,” he said. “It’s what patients want and we’ve learned that it is absolutely the right thing to do in regard to driving systems improvements.”

“Clinicians insisting on openness and transparency when it comes to improving quality can help build that just culture,” he added. – by Alaina Tedesco

Disclosure: Kachalia reports no relevant financial disclosures.