Can We Handle the Truth?

May 30, 2014
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By: Valerie Freeman, Imprimis Group CEO

This morning I had the pleasure of hearing Lee Taft, J.D., M.Div., who heads his own consulting firm.  His topic was “When Things Go Wrong:  Risks and Benefits of Disclosing Adverse Events.”  It was a powerful presentation backed up with data and research to support his experience.

For 20 years, Lee worked in Dallas as a trial lawyer and saw first-hand how litigation – and litigators – failed both the patient and the practitioner. He began to explore alternatives to traditional litigation and in 1996, he left his practice and entered Harvard Divinity School where he wrote his graduate thesis on apology in legal contexts and became a pioneer in the movement requiring disclosure of adverse events.  His scholarship focuses on the interrelationship among disclosure, patient safety, and wellness – how disclosure promotes healing for patients and practitioners.  For the past 11 years, he has worked with organizations across the country using apologetic theory to transform conflicts. He also worked with Stanford to design a program for responding to medical error. A recent study showed that the program has led to a 36% reduction in claims and is saving Stanford about $3M a year.

What I got out of his presentation is that people make mistakes – some causing harm, even death. The aftermath of the event, however, is what needs to be transformed.  According to Lee, there are methods that can be used to help both the practitioners and the patients (or person harmed) get through the healing process that keeps the practitioners from further harm (high rate of suicide, addiction, etc. after the event) and the patients and/or their families from feeling that no one cares.

He believes that fairness, transparency and accountability is preferable to those who tell us to defend and deny – advice that often costs us our reputation, our customers, and worst of all, our integrity.

To read his case studies, go to www.taftsolutions.com