Impact of Mandatory Reporting on Patient Safety

This paper focuses on whether mandatory reporting can be beneficial or undermine patient safety in health care practice. Reporting of errors has been fundamental tool towards patent safety. The Institute of Medicine reports on medical errors caused by health care workforce have focused on reporting systems through avenues such as holding the providers accountable for their actions and providing crucial information which are beneficial to improve safety.

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Impact of mandatory reporting on patient safety
Introduction
Patient safety is a discipline which emphasizes safety ion health care practices. It
incorporates various strategies which are geared towards promoting the health of the patient.
These strategies involve, prevention, reduction, reporting and analysing medical errors which
have adverse effects on patients. The prevalence of avoidance of adverse effects on patients
was not clearly established till lately when many countries reported varied and worrying
statistics on harmed and killed patients due to errors. WHO recognised that health care
associated errors had an impact on in every patient globally. Research and various studies
have been undertaken on informing patient safety and health, (WHO, 2008). This has resulted
to continuous safety knowledge which has led to improved lessons being adopted from
various fields, coupled with innovative technologies which enhance error reporting systems.
Reporting systems
Reporting of errors has been fundamental tool towards patent safety. The Institute of
Medicine reports on medical errors caused by health care workforce, (Makary & Daniel,
2016), have focused on reporting systems through avenues such as holding the providers
accountable for their actions and providing crucial information which are beneficial to
improve safety. Various initiatives which target systems which are related to contribute errors
in complex health care systems have been the focus. Due to the prevalence of errors, many
are never reported voluntary or through other mechanism.
The Institute of Medicine, through their collaborative initiatives have identified
mandatory and voluntary reporting systems as a crucial component which improves the
health of patients. Voluntary reporting systems have varied scope, through medication errors,
sentinel events to other relating hospital based internal reporting systems. Voluntary reporting
has gone beyond the incidences and falls which fail to be reported. Voluntary reporting has
never been the focus of many health care institutions, (Hammerling, 2015).
On their other end, mandatory reporting has focussed on ensuring that health care
providers and leaderships are held accountable for the serious events which occur. This paper
focuses on whether mandatory reporting can be beneficial or undermine patient safety in
health care practice, (Dudeck et al, 2015).
Mandatory reporting in context
An important aspect in the field of reporting is the patient safety and how prevention
of harm can be effected. The key role in patient safety systems has been to enhance patient

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safety. Many health care errors are often caused by weak systems which have root causes that
can be corrected. However as much as each and every event in health care is unique, there are
similar patterns which have been assessed which at times go un noticed.
Reporting of health care reporting is key to enhance patient safety problems. On its on
view, it often can never give a holistic picture of risks and harm to the patient. Mandatory
systems have to have clear objectives and goals which are beneficial in enhancing reporting
and its capacity of ensuring reported is cultivated, (McFadden, Stock & Gowen, 2015).
Health care providers often feel concerned about disclosure. They often feel ashamed
and fear reporting mistakes committed in service, which they form as medical missteps and
transforms itself to clinical mistakes which can lead to suits. With this cycle, mistakes and
errors can be hidden thus creating negative cycle of events. When medical practitioners are
anxious of malpractice, they develop defensive behaviour towards the patients which are
barriers to preventing and reduction of medical errors, (Bogner, 2018).
When the concerns of the patient are not addressed with reporting errors, studies have
shown, (Donaldson, Panesar & Darzi, 2014) that they are unwilling to return for future health
care needs and following medical advice and more likely will opt for medical suits, (Meeks et
al, 2014). Surveys done for patients in the public domain have shown that they often believe
on health care which is moderately safe which are in cognisance of their errors which affect
them when they are sick in hospital settings. Patients are often concerned with misdiagnosis,
physician related errors, nursing errors, and medication errors, medical equipment and
procedural errors, (Ogrinc et al, 2016).
Another significant t impact of mandatory reporting is that it has crucial role on
patients. Patient scan have the ability to understand and enhance risk percertpion which they
are concerned on health care related errors. Both patients and health staff have the
opportunity to improve health quality.
Studies done have shown that patients often want full disclosure of their medication
process, (Sandars, 2015). Patients often want full disclosure and want to know the medical
errors facing them and its impact on their health. Mandatory disclosure often have effects on
averting patients seeking other medical process and improves patients satisfaction, improving
trust and decreasing the chances of patients seeking legal advices due to medical suits.
Patients have the right to information and there is a strong desire for disclosure,
(Marsteller , Hsu & Weeks, 2014). Failure of adhering to disclosures has anticipated
outcomes. Mandatory disclosure is an important factor which contributes immensely to

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creation of good patient culture of safety, thus adoption of its creates high reliability factor,
(Schmidt et al, 2015). There is a common agreement that mandatory disclosure and reporting
of errors in health care should take effect when patients are harmed and a corrective action
should be undertaken through systems improvement.
Other studies have argued on the level of disclosure given to patients. There is an
assertion which has taken the route that providing unnecessary information to the patient
often causes more harm. This line of reasoning has its dubious debacle in the contentions of
patients being more harmed when there are told the truth as compared to disclosing the
mistake. Physicians have the opinion that responsible reporting should be done when
disclosing to patients. This is out of research studies among nurses in emergency settings who
are less likely to disclose error with 23-54% compared to physicians who had 71%-73%,
(Sandars, 2015).
There often instances where error disclosure information is followed by the victims
who are seeking further action, with this all errors disclosure do not reflect those that have
harmed the patients. Studies have shown that when disclosure is done by physicians, there is
no suspicion of cover up, (Marsteller, Hsu & Weeks, 2014).
Mandatory disclosures of health care mistakes on patients stand at benefitting the
institutions and leading to reduction of reporter responses. Specific policy statements and
systems on error disclosure are often given preference compared to position statements. The
mandatory requirement policy and guidelines ensures that patients are notified, onset of
patient care and disclosure content given. With this plans, patient care is also incorporated
which ensures maximum benefit to the patient. Incorporating such mandatory framework for
patient safety is key to ensure safety and quality to the patient, (Herzig et al, 2015).
Conclusion
Health care mandatory reporting is essential for patient care and can be incorporated
in established and formal systems in health care organization. The key core values of
mandatory reporting are non maelficence, preventing of occurrence of errors and doing no
harm to both patients and health care practitioners. The link between mandatory reporting and
patient safety is to reduce and manage risks and potential threats of harm to the patients. Thus
it is essential to recognise that mandatory reporting is effective in enhancing patient safety
process and promoting care approaches.

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