What Incentives and/or Disincentives Have Helped Health Care Professionals Reduce Medical Errors?
A culture of reporting where information is confidential and non-discoverable is the most significant incentive to reduce medical errors.10 Support from opinion leaders of professional organizations is also considered very helpful to promote the culture of safety. For example, recognition by the Georgia State legislature, acknowledging certain hospitals’ patient safety efforts provided an extremely important incentive for continued and expanded efforts. In one Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) network, participating physicians were provided an increased reimbursement for providing counseling and patient information. Because carrying out these tasks requires additional clinician time, the cost is reimbursed if it is recorded in the chart or electronic medical record.11 Timely feedback from reporting systems is a critical incentive to continue to report medical errors and to monitor patient safety improvements. Reporters need to know what was done with the information they provided,
