Utah doctors figure you'd also like to hear: "I'm sorry."
Physicians and hospital directors believe the power of a simple apology could neutralize hostility between physicians and patients after a mistake is made. Health care providers asked state lawmakers Wednesday to make a doctor's statement of sympathy inadmissible in court for malpractice lawsuits. They argue a plain, "I'm sorry," could restore trust in the doctor-patient relationship, allow injured Utahns to be made whole more quickly and limit malpractice claims.
"Patients need us to be honest and upfront," Catherine Wheeler, an obstetrician-gynecologist told members of the Utah Legislature's Judiciary Interim Committee. "If we make a mistake, we want to be honest with our patients."
Instead, Wheeler, president of the Utah Medical Association, says, many doctors remain silent, afraid of being sued.
South Weber Republican Sen. Dave Thomas, a local-government attorney, has drafted legislation to block lawyers from using such statements of remorse against doctors. The bill would protect any physician's "statements, affirmations, gestures, or conduct expressing apology, fault, sympathy, commiseration, condolence, compassion or a general sense of benevolence."
Thomas said he is hoping to "get around the silence" that surrounds medical mistakes now. He was inspired by the national "Sorry Works" movement organized to curb lawsuits stemming from physician error. Seventeen states have adopted similar legislation. Thomas' draft bill is modeled on Colorado's law.
"If they screw up, they all shut up," Thomas said.
The Utah Trial Lawyers Association backs Thomas' efforts to breach the physician "wall of silence," but attorney Charlie Thronson said the bill as written goes much further than encouraging honest communication between doctors and their patients. Colorado's law is the only one in the country that includes an exemption for statements of fault. By mimicking that language, Thronson said, Utah is "immunizing" doctors, giving them a "free pass" to alter medical records and lie on the witness stand to avoid liability. With no statements admissible in court, patients will have no recourse.
"Utahns are a special breed. Nine times out of 10 [when a doctor apologizes], they will suck it up and go on down the road," Thronson said.
But in cases where an apology is not enough to make it better, Thronson said, Utahns need to be able to dissect physicians' statement of fault in court.
"It's very difficult to prove these cases. All of the witnesses are generally defendants. And the patient was unconscious when it happened, injured or dead," he said.
Laree Miller, from the Utah Citizens Alliance, urged lawmakers to cut the word "fault" from the list of protected statements a doctor could make. She said her father was given HIV-tainted blood after open-heart surgery. "I still haven't gotten an apology," Miller said.
Some lawmakers were equally troubled by the inclusion of statements of fault in Thomas' bill.
Logan Republican Rep. Scott Wyatt, a former county prosecutor, worried that language would grant a "huge shift of power" to doctors. "I'm troubled by taking any information away from a jury," Wyatt said.
