I recently came across an article from an Ohio newspaper that detailed a proposal in Ohio’s legislature to strengthen a current law allowing doctors and other health care providers to apologize for mistakes that occurred during medical care, without that apology being used against them later in Court.

Many states, including Washington, have already passed similar “I’m Sorry” or “Apology” Laws. In Washington, it’s codified in RCW 5.64.010. That law mandates that certain evidence is not admissible against health care providers in subsequent legal action, particularly offering, promising or actually paying expenses that were caused by a medical mistake, and apologies for such mistakes if done within 30 days of the mistake.

The reasons for passing this law in 2006 appear flawed to me sitting her in 2014, but I won’t get into that. What is interesting to me is how I’ve seen such apologies in my practice.

Certainly I have no way of knowing how many patients are dissuaded from calling an attorney after frank, open, and honest discussions with their doctors after there has been a medical error. I can contemplate that there must be good that comes from such discussions. Perhaps the patient victim just wants answers for why a mistake occurred, and without serious, long term injuries, answers may be all that is needed.

I also think there are other victims who have legitimate claims for serious harms, and are dissuaded from calling an attorney and bringing a claim because they like that their doctor was open and honest about a mistake that was made. I do not pretend to judge the inherent rightness or wrongness of such outcomes, since each situation is unique. But I have to think this happens.

And there are patient victims who call me after having such discussions with their health care providers, and it seems to me that in at least some cases, folks would not have thought to call an attorney prior to having the discussion. So it probably works both ways.

What I will say is that bringing medical malpractice cases is not only about compensating victims for their harms, but also about holding accountable health care providers who make serious errors in the hopes that such accountability will deter future mistakes and improve the safety and quality of future health care for all.

I can think of one case in particular, with a health care entity I will not name but for which I have high regard. This institution employed a health care worker that made a terrible mistake and caused a patient to die. Of course, the widow had a number of questions, and the institution’s representatives spent time with her answering those. Then, after doing so, they openly and honestly pointed out the mistake that caused the death, a mistake that had not been on the widow’s radar.

That openness and honesty, outside of the 30 day window for keeping such evidence inadmissible, prompted the widow to call my firm, and we were able to work with the institution to appropriately compensate her for that loss.

The institution had no obligation to do what it did, and it cost them a significant amount of money in doing so. And I have near certainty that most other such institutions would not have done the same thing. But it did the right thing.

As a patient advocate, I’m generally against things that serve to impede my clients’ rights to recover for needless medical errors that cause harm. The Apology statute is certainly one of them. The problem I see is that, just as I was taught as a kid, and I now teach my kids, people are supposed to admit when they have done something wrong, and do what’s necessary to make it right. Throw a baseball through a window? Say you are sorry and pay for it. That sort of thing.

So in a sense, there is a part of me that likes that doctors can feel like they can apologize when they err and cause harm. But another part of me thinks that saying sorry is really the easiest part. What is the hardest is actually making up for the harm that has been caused. In that sense, we as a society of health care workers and consumers have a long way to go.