Back in September of 2006 I blogged about a study showing that doctors who are nice to their patients are sued for malpractice less often - despite the fact that nice and mean doctors make about the same number of mistakes. Two years later, hospitals are starting to see the religion of making nice. And patients and hospital owners are smiling about the results.
On the Freakonomics blog on July 21, guest columnist Julie Salamon (who spent a year watching from inside Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn) writes that hospitals have banded together in the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals to require its 15,000 member hospitals, nursing homes, and other health agencies to create and abide by a "code of conduct that defines acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and to create a formal process for managing unacceptable behavior."
This "better behavior commission" agrees that patients who feel their have been treated fairly and kindly are less likely to bring lawsuits against doctors. But their report also suggests that disrespect among staff members can worsen treatment as well. Doctors who treat nurses poorly, for example, create a tense atmosphere that can lead to blinding emotions and resulting mistakes.
While she does not report on any change in malpractice suits or hospital financial performance, Salamon shares the results of a Maimonides survey below, which shows dramatic improvement in staff behavior.
As I said nearly two years ago, the real magic of The Challenge Dividend occurs when challenge not only improves business results and innovation, but when the by-product is a better society.
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