Consumer Group Says Gregg Bill Could Risk Patient Safety
WASHINGTON – Consumer advocates are calling on New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg to amend a bill that they say would cripple New Hampshire residents’ ability to choose the safest place to receive medical care.
The bill, which Gregg co-sponsored, would create a system to gather data from health-care providers in an effort to reduce such problems as infection rates and medical errors. In theory, the data also could help patients decide which doctors or hospitals to choose. But the information would be kept from the public.
Under the legislation, the federal government would create “patient safety organizations” to collect the data from doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers that submit it voluntarily. The organizations, which could be public or private, then would work to help patients by decreasing mistakes.
The bill states it will revolutionize patient safety by fostering a “learningárather than punitive environment” for health care providers. Gregg and other sponsors contend that if the information were released to the public, health-care providers would not volunteer it.
“There is no question that if a system is going to work, then information regarding errors needs to be kept in a confidential way or people will not step forward and talk about errors,” said Palmer P. Jones, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Medical Society. The organization, which represents doctors, supports the bill.
Jones said that given what he called rampant malpractice suits, doctors, hospitals and other providers would be reluctant to voluntarily report medical errors without legal protections.
The patient safety data in question are defined broadly in the bill as any data collected by health-care providers specifically for submission to patient safety organizations. But the law would not protect other medical records, such as maintenance and billing schedules.
But patient safety advocates fear the bill may eclipse state laws that mandate greater disclosure of patient safety data and worry that defining the confidential information broadly would rob patients of the opportunity to make informed decisions about the safest places to receive care.
In its current form, the bill would make it illegal to report which hospitals or other health-care providers had the highest rates of infection. And none of the data collected could be used in either criminal or civil actions.
“Our concern is that the legislation is not clear about how it affects state laws,” said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union’s ‘Stop Hospital Infections’ campaign. “There are currently many states that require hospitals to provide information to the state, [which] in turn provides it to the public. Consumers will use the information to see what the performance is of certain hospitals. I could tell exactly which hospitals I don’t want to be having my surgery in.”
McGiffert’s organization wants Gregg to clarify the bill so it will not trump stricter state laws. Gregg is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where the bill currently awaits a vote.
New Hampshire has no mandatory disclosure laws for medical errors and infection rates. But the state legislature last March created a commission to “identify medical errors and their causes” and explore ways to reduce them. The commission’s preliminary report is due in January and could ultimately lead to state laws, Jones said.
“What we’re saying is, at the very least, don’t undo work that states have done and can do,” said Ami Gadea, assistant legislative counsel at Consumers Union, the watchdog group that publishes Consumers Reports magazine.
A Republican Senate aide said members of Gregg’s committee are aware of Consumers Union’s concerns. But Gregg said he didn’t know whether the bill’s current language would nullify state laws.
“The goal here is to try to get some uniformity and, as a result, save costs for people,” Sen. Gregg said in an interview. “But the states do have certain rights that we’re not going to be overly restrictive of. So there’s a balancing.”
