Morbidity & Mortality Conferences

[SlaskWroclaw18]

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I have read through many books about M&M conferences. I read that there was proprosed legislation where if passed would allow legal discovery into these private conferences that I presume could be used against doctors in malpractice lawsuits. Is there any news stories that can confirm this? I have been looking through websites and databases and can't find anythng.
Thanks.

 

[Shinobiz11]

I think they are allowed to go into these. It's not like this information is classified. There is always a risk if you are going into surgery or any other procedure.

 

[docB]

I think they are allowed to go into these. It's not like this information is classified. There is always a risk if you are going into surgery or any other procedure.

M&M is not discoverable. It is generally lumped in with a hospital's QA/QC process which is also not discoverable. I haven't heard of any moves to change that (doesn't mean it's not happening, just means I havene't heard about it) but if it happened everyone would just quit having M&M and QA/QC. To continue would be liability suicide.

For those who don't know M&M is Morbidity and Mortality conference. That's where all the doctors and doctors in training meet and hash out mistakes, poor outcomes and so on. QA/QC is Quality Assurance and Quality Control. That's the process the hospital uses to investigate errors and bad outcomes to try to punish the guilty and make changes that will avoid repeat issues.

Discoverable means that an attorney, especially an attorney suing the doctor and/or hospital for the patient whose case is being discussed and/or investigated can subpoena the information and minutes of the meeting and possible force the people who were there to testify about what was said.

The purpose of these meetings is to allow people to be totally honest so that things will get fixed. If you eliminate the protection no one could be honest because it would lead to them being dragged into court as free experts for the plaintiff.

 

[Shinobiz11]

I watched a presentation about cardiac surgery on TV and it had M&M rates for various surgeries. Most of them were around 3-5% which I assume is low.

 

[docB]

I watched a presentation about cardiac surgery on TV and it had M&M rates for various surgeries. Most of them were around 3-5% which I assume is low.

True but a 5% complication rate means that for every 20 surgeries you do there'll be one complication.

 

[FutureCTDoc]

This is misposted and should be placed into either the IM or Surg forum.