January 2012

How’s your new exercise program going? Have you lost five pounds yet? Mine’s going nowhere and I’ve gained weight. More importantly, have you stuck to your resolution to improve your risk management skills? We make it easy for you.  We have short, focused papers on the issues that bedevil psychiatrists in their daily practices: – Do I have to release this patient’s record to he ...

American Medical News (Jan 9, 2012) reported in a short item that the average cost of defending a medical malpractice claim (all specialties, nationwide) rose 63% between 2001 and 2010 to over $47,000. This highlights an important but often overlooked point about medical malpractice insurance. Psychiatry is a low-risk specialty in the two key measures that actuaries use to asse ...

A Guest Blog by Rich Stagnato, PRMS Accounts Representative If you are not employed by a hospital or government facility, you will likely need your own medical malpractice policy. You should research your medical malpractice insurance and risk management needs by reviewing policy and feature differences. Ultimately, you have to feel comfortable that the people you are buying y ...

A Guest Blog by Donna Vanderpool, MBA, JD, Vice-President of Risk Management It’s the start of a new year, so I just cannot resist offering one resolution to consider for 2012. Here it is: try to document your patients’ treatment records so that someone else can read the record and understand what happened in your treatment and why. The “someone else” could be another clinicia ...

A couple weeks ago, a doctor (gastroenterologist) was killed in a traffic accident on his way to work. When I see a story like this, naturally I feel bad for the doctor, his family, his friends, and his colleagues. But I also think about his patients: they have lost someone important in their lives as well. How will they hear the news? Who will take over their care? What about ...