How - Dov Seidman [49]
In the 1970s and 1980s, during the Cold War, East German athletes won a slew of Olympic medals, far out of proportion to the size of their population. After the fall of communism, what the world widely suspected quickly became well known: They built their success on a regimen of enforced use of performance-enhancing drugs, more commonly known as anabolic steroids.
These drugs later wreaked havoc on the health of the athletes forced to take them, and in 2005, a small group of these former East German Olympians banded together to seek restitution and compensation for their progressive medical problems and expenses.13 Since the East German government no longer exists, they sued JVE Jenapharm, the company that manufactured the drugs, seeking $4.1 million to pay for medical costs.14 Jenapharm is an old-line, family company dating back to the nineteenth century, that is now owned by pharmaceutical giant Bayer Schering Pharma AG. The firm is known today for its expertise in reproductive medicine, and manufactures a line of oral contraceptives and postmenopausal hormone replacement therapies.
Jenapharm’s response to the lawsuit was clear, immediate, and unambiguous. The company argued that, under the command economy of East German communism, the state forced it to manufacture the drugs and then distribute them to athletes without warnings or options. Facing the shadow of potentially bankrupting legal action from the nearly 10,000 other athletes who were similarly harmed, Jenapharm said, essentially, “It’s not our fault and we’ll see you in court.” Given international and German legal precedent, this position contains potentially strong legal merit, and fighting the suit was clearly an option, something, they seemed to say to themselves, they could do.
On the other side of the globe, the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor consists of three hospitals, a medical school, and numerous other health facilities. In 2001, UMHS, like many similar institutions, suffered under a budget-busting load of medical malpractice litigation that had seen exponential growth nationwide over the preceeding decade. Given the increasingly transparent nature of medical care, better-educated patients, and opportunistic personal injury lawyers, it realized that it was going to incur liabilities in some percentage of cases despite doing everything it could to eliminate systemic errors. That year UMHS fought many malpractice claims and lawsuits in court, but also settled more than 260 others at a cost of $18 million.15
As the administrators at UMHS considered ways reduce their potential liability, they realized they could do little about lawsuits stemming from catastrophic errors that result in loss of life or limb. They focused instead on suits involving less serious consequences, like a patient with epilepsy admitted for surgery whose doctor forgot to note his postoperative need for antispasmodic medication. When that patient had a seizure in the bathroom and bumped his head, requiring a few stitches, typically a lawsuit quickly followed. In cases like these, they asked themselves, what should we be doing for our patients?
Continuing to fight malpractice claims in court remained an option, but they chose a different course of action. They encouraged their doctors to say, “I’m sorry.” Using their established doctor/patient interaction education program, they developed scenarios to help doctors understand how to step up and promptly admit when a mistake was made. Now, when they discover an error like the prescription oversight for the epileptic patient, the doctor apologizes on the spot. Unlike Jenapharm, when UMHS announced this new approach, the strategy was widely ridiculed as legal suicide.
It is critically important to realize that in a hyperconnected world, where information about your actions travels instantly to any interested party, people watching you will judge not just what you do, but how you do it. They’re not going to sit back and wait to see if you win or lose; they’re