This activity is intended for healthcare providers delivering care to women and their families.
After completing this activity, the participant should be better able to:
1. Explain how required reporting of adverse patient events helps to determine their cause
2. State that reporting of hospital errors is state regulated
Estimated time to complete activity: 0.25 hours
Susan J. Gross, MD, FRCSC, FACOG, FACMG
President and CEO, The ObG Project
Postgraduate Institute for Medicine (PIM) requires faculty, planners, and others in control of educational content to disclose all their financial relationships with ineligible companies. All identified conflicts of interest (COI) are thoroughly vetted and mitigated according to PIM policy. PIM is committed to providing its learners with high quality accredited continuing education activities and related materials that promote improvements or quality in healthcare and not a specific proprietary business interest of an ineligible company.
The PIM planners and others have nothing to disclose. The OBG Project planners and others have nothing to disclose.
Faculty: Susan J. Gross, MD, receives consulting fees from Cradle Genomics, and has financial interest in The ObG Project, Inc.
Planners and Managers: The PIM planners and managers, Trace Hutchison, PharmD, Samantha Mattiucci, PharmD, CHCP, Judi Smelker-Mitchek, MBA, MSN, RN, and Jan Schultz, MSN, RN, CHCP have nothing to disclose.
Fees for participating and receiving CME credit for this activity are as posted on The ObG Project website. During the period from Jan 25 2022 through Jan 25 2024, participants must read the learning objectives and faculty disclosures and study the educational activity.
If you wish to receive acknowledgment for completing this activity, please complete the test and evaluation. Upon registering and successfully completing the test with a score of 100% and the activity evaluation, your certificate will be made available immediately.
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by the Postgraduate Institute for Medicine and The ObG Project. Postgraduate Institute for Medicine is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Postgraduate Institute for Medicine designates this enduring material for a maximum of 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
The maximum number of hours awarded for this Continuing Nursing Education activity is 0.2 contact hours.
In 2004, the New Jersey Patient Safety Act was signed into law. The statute was designed to improve patient safety in hospitals and other health care facilities by establishing a medical error reporting system. The system promotes comprehensive reporting of adverse patient events, systematic analysis of their causes, and creation of solutions that will improve health care quality and save lives. The goal is not to point fingers or assign blame.
In Conn vs. Rebustillo, the medical malpractice action involved a patient who fell out of bed while hospitalized, suffered a brain hemorrhage, and later died. The hospital conducted an internal root cause analysis which was submitted to the state health department along with a Patient Safety Act report. The attorneys for the deceased patient sought disclosure of the documents to show that the hospital had not complied with all of the process requirements of the Patient Safety Act. The trial judge ruled that the root cause analysis had to be disclosed along with any other withheld documents that were part of the root cause analysis process.
The hospital appealed the ruling. The Appellate Division reversed the decision of the trial court. It found that the privilege established in the Patient Safety Act is an absolute privilege and protects all documents submitted to the Department of Health, including the root cause analysis. In addition, the internal documents prepared by the hospital as part of its Patient Safety Act investigation which were not submitted to the state health department were also protected from disclosure if the hospital can show that the documents were developed as part of a Patient Safety Act plan which complies with the requirements of the Patient Safety Act. This ruling applies even if the facility fails to comply with reporting requirements.
This ruling is applicable in New Jersey only. Reporting and disclosure of medical errors varies widely across the United States and is frequently in flux depending on the courts overseeing each case. In the 2009 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, twenty-seven states had instituted medical error reporting systems, with the vast majority (21 states) containing explicit protections against legal discoverability of error reports in civil actions. More recently (2017) the Supreme Court of Florida overturned a prior ruling shielding patient safety reports, stating that “health care provider or facility … cannot shield documents not privileged under state law or the state constitution by virtue of its unilateral decision of where to place the documents under the voluntary reporting system created by the [PSQIA].” Hospital error report disclosures will continue to vary state by state and evolve with further court rulings.
NJ State Patient Safety Reporting System
National Law Review: Appellate Division Accords Absolute Privilege To Patient Safety Act Materials
A National Survey of Medical Error Reporting Laws
Court rules patient-safety info subject to litigation discovery
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OBG Project CME requires a modern web browser (Internet Explorer 10+, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge). Certain educational activities may require additional software to view multimedia, presentation, or printable versions of their content. These activities will be marked as such and will provide links to the required software. That software may be: Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Media Player, or Real Networks Real One Player.
This educational activity may contain discussion of published and/or investigational uses of agents that are not indicated by the FDA. The planners of this activity do not recommend the use of any agent outside of the labeled indications.
The opinions expressed in the educational activity are those of the faculty and do not necessarily represent the views of the planners. Please refer to the official prescribing information for each product for discussion of approved indications, contraindications, and warnings.
Participants have an implied responsibility to use the newly acquired information to enhance patient outcomes and their own professional development. The information
presented in this activity is not meant to serve as a guideline for patient management. Any procedures, medications, or other courses of diagnosis or treatment discussed or suggested in this activity should not be used by clinicians without evaluation of their patient’s conditions and possible contraindications and/or dangers in use, review of any applicable manufacturer’s product information, and comparison with recommendations of other authorities.
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