You’re burnt out and work hard day-in and day-out. Getting caught up in the daily tedium of a schedule can really affect work performance. But beware — it can also cause a rise in adverse events and increase risk.

Handoffs occur any time there is a transfer of responsibility for a patient from one caregiver to another. Regulatory and accrediting bodies are well aware of the dangers of ineffective handoffs.

As a means of generating more revenue, physicians are becoming more creative with the types of programs and services they provide to patients and non-patients alike. The problem is some or all of these services may fall outside the scope of CAP’s medical liability coverage.

The Joint Commission estimates that 70 percent of sentinel events include communication breakdowns as one of the root causes of preventable patient injury. When we review our closed claims, we see, but for the communication failure, the patient injury would never have occurred.

In the coming year, the Risk Management and Patient Safety Department will continue mining data from a variety of sources: CAP closed claims, hotline calls, CAPCares calls, and practice survey data. Our goal is to identify trends, vulnerabilities, and emerging concerns or new issues that impact a physician’s practice. This article will provide a brief summary of findings from the 2017 General Surgery – Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy study.