Medical Error Prevention Management and Vicarious Liability

Medical errors are unintended consequences of medical treatment, regardless if it was unexpected, avoidable, evident or harmful to a patient. Any type of unexpected injury to a patient resulting from medical care would be considered a medical error.

Sometimes a healthcare provider could have avoided an error but did not through negligence. Contrarily, a medical error can happen that was unexpected and not avoidable. Regardless of how a medical error occurs, a healthcare provider, and sometimes even managers and/or establishment owners are liable for the error.

Any type of medical error could result in a medical practice claim. Our newest Medical Errors Prevention training here at CE Institute LLC is to teach healthcare providers how to minimize their risk with medical errors that could result in malpractice claims, regardless of how the error occurred.

Almost all healthcare practices are filled with managers. If you’re self-employed, then you are your own manager and responsible for your entire practice. Managers could be culpable for medical errors when the error occurs under their management role. VICARIOUS LIABILITY can hold employers and managers liable for actions of their subordinates. Vicarious liability practices might be enforced differently from state to state.

In the state of Florida, even a 1-person licensed massage establishment must have an assigned DEM (designated establishment manager) registered with the state of Florida, per Florida state law. Different states could impose various management requirements in healthcare practices, beyond a private or public healthcare institution’s requirements.
While Florida’s DEMs were initially installed to help prevent human trafficking in illegitimate massage establishments, these DEMs are now being held responsible for other provider’s treatments and their results within the establishment.

If you are wanting to, or considering moving into a managerial role at work, or perhaps you are already managing, then you should request your managerial tasks be provided to you in writing, to negotiate and/or fulfill them. If you’re offered a managerial role, here are some medical error prevention issues to consider prior to accepting the position. Feel free to request a tour of a potentially new work facility and/or speak to other staff PRIOR to accepting the offer, or ask the employer if your managerial position will provide the budget and resources to create a safe, quality workplace. A partial list of possible managerial medical error malpractice issues you should look out for in addition to facility medical error risks are:

1. Staffing i.e. staff are overbooked to provide quality care.  Shortening or not providing services billed to insurance would be considered insurance fraud and could be criminally prosecuted.
2. Scope Creep i.e. staff are providing responsibilities outside of their licensed scope of practice.
3. Quality Issues i.e. existing management is unqualified to manage by leaving potential malpractice issues unresolved, and you do not have a budget to fix problems, such as the upholstery on treatment tables is ripped or torn so it cannot be properly sanitized between patients, etc.
4. Supply Issues: i.e. there’s not enough towels or sheets, so they’re being reused causing more sanitation concerns. Adding a shortage of sanitation supplies to this would create catastrophic negligence.
5. Managerial experience: if your role is to manage others but you do have managerial experience or training, or those managing you do not have the expertise to make good work decisions to avoid error.

Maintaining or accepting a managerial role in healthcare is regularly a negotiation. 
Not only would salary or compensation be negotiable, but you should also negotiate for a quality work environment or work-related training (i.e. management classes) to reduce YOUR risk of being responsible for medical errors that were completely avoidable.
Remember that your risk for malpractice claims is likely greater when avoidable medical errors are committed. These issues we just reviewed can be proactively addressed prior to an avoidable medical error occurring. For greater medical errors prevention training in healthcare, please visit: https://ceinstitute.com/collections/mandatory