Sensible and sane reforms to improve patient safety

Health Minister Leo Varadkar announced yesterday a range of measures to improve patient safety. They include a simplified complaints procedure which is a very welcome change.

The current process of making a complaint against a doctor or other medical professional is a tortuous and convoluted one, giving rise to the suspicion that some hospital management use it to exhaust complainers into giving up.

In fact, the opposite often happens, with patients spurred on by such obfuscation to take their complaint to the courts, thereby giving rise to substantial legal costs that might otherwise have been avoided.

Of even greater significance is the Government plan to introduce legal reforms to reduce the length of court cases involving patients who have suffered because of medical malpractice.

Patients who receive compensation for long-term damage or injury will now be awarded an annual payment instead of a lump sum.

This will avoid the current necessity for courts to make huge awards of millions of euro in the case of catastrophic medical mistakes.

Best of all, doctors who have made medical mistakes will be encouraged to apply the principle of open disclosure whereby they are open and frank with patients.

These reforms are so sensible and sane it is a wonder they were never seriously considered before.