• Lorens A Helmchen, Michael R Richards, and Timothy B McDonald.
• School of Public Health, Division of Health Policy and Administration, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA. helmchen@uic.edu
• Med Care. 2010 Nov 1; 48 (11): 955-61.

BackgroundAlthough strongly favored by patients and ethically imperative for providers, the disclosure of medical errors to patients remains rare because providers fear that it will trigger lawsuits and jeopardize their reputation. To date little is known how patients might respond to their providers' disclosure of a medical error even when paired with an offer of remediation.Research DesignA representative sample of Illinois residents was surveyed in 2008 about their knowledge about medical errors, their confidence that their providers would disclose medical errors to them, and their propensity to sue and recommend providers that disclose medical errors and offer to remedy them. We report the response patterns to these questions. As robustness checks, we also estimate the covariate-adjusted distributions and test the associations among these dimensions of medical-error disclosure.ResultsOf the 1018 respondents, 27% would sue and 38% would recommend the hospital after medical error disclosure with an accompanying offer of remediation. Compared with the least confident respondents, those who were more confident in their providers' commitment to disclose were not likely to sue but significantly and substantially more likely to recommend their provider.ConclusionsPatients who are confident in their providers' commitment to disclose medical errors are not more litigious and far more forgiving than patients who have no faith in their providers' commitment to disclose.

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