Florida Medical Malpractice Reform Act
The Florida Comprehensive Medical Malpractice Reform Act--also known as Florida Statute 395.0197--addresses the way hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices handle medical errors. Vista CEU, a care provider education portal, notes that the law mainly focuses on incident reporting, hospital systems and individual physician liability.
Other People Are Reading
-
Risk Management
-
Florida's Comprehensive Medical Malpractice Reform Act requires that all hospitals create a risk management program that educates hospital staff about adverse incidents, investigates such incidents and reports them to state authorities. Vista CEU notes that the law also requires that hospitals hire a risk manager to oversee the program.
Incident Reporting
-
The law mandates that hospitals must report adverse incidents, including patient deaths, wrong-site surgery, surgery on the wrong patient, the removal of surgical objects left inside a patient and the performance of medically unnecessary surgery. Hospitals must file formal reports with the state's Agency for Health Care Administration.
-
Increased Liability
-
Florida's Comprehensive Medical Malpractice Reform Act suggests that hospitals take on liability for any activities performed by individual healthcare providers at the facility. The law includes allegations of sexual misconduct against hospital staff and empowers hospital risk managers to investigate and report these incidents.
Included Injuries
-
The law considers a reportable event to be any event that results in patient death, brain damage, disfigurement, limitation of physical or mental function or fracture of bones or joints because of wrong-site surgery, surgery on the wrong patient, unnecessary surgery or surgery to remove a forgotten surgical object.
-
