The Dangers of Legacy Technology in Care Team Communication
“Oh, I thought you said…” is a common refrain heard by parents, teachers, and TV police captains when their idealistic subordinates pretend to have misunderstood a command. Unfortunately, it is also a paraphrase of conversations heard far too often in clinical settings among healthcare providers, and it has severe consequences.
Miscommunication in healthcare causes quantifiable breakdowns in, and added cost to, delivery of care. Earlier this year, CRICO published a study that looked at medical malpractice lawsuits from the previous five years. The researchers found that more than 1,700 deaths in that timespan could be attributed to communication problems. In addition to the loss of life, the suits cost approximately $1.7 billion. That’s bad enough, but the CRICO stats only reflect part of the problem, as those numbers were pulled only from malpractice cases – i.e. where legal action occurred. Additional data has suggested almost two-thirds of sentinel events are caused by miscommunication within and between careteams, and that this problem costs over $100 billion a year in lost revenue and avoidable operating expenses.
Clearly, hiccups and outright failures in care team collaboration are enormously detrimental to all aspects of the healthcare system. Breakdowns in communication can and do occur between any two participants in delivery of care: nurse-nurse, nurse-physician, patient-staff, patient-nurse, etc. Some of these failures arise from in-person interactions, such as when a verbal message is not relayed from patient to staff to physician within the clinic. In many other cases, physical distance creates a literal game of telephone where humorous phrases are replaced by negative patient outcomes.
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