The Foundation for Health Care Quality is a Seattle-based nonprofit foundation that offers third party sources to everyone involved in healthcare, including physicians, patients, government organizations, and payers. The institution offers various resources to promote healthcare quality and patient care, such as assessment and communication-and-resolution (CPP) programs.

Michelle Mello, the Director of the Program in Law and Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, analyzed the effectiveness of communication-and-resolution programs (CRPs) in this article. She found that these models are efficient at addressing healthcare liability issues revolving around adverse medical outcomes. These programs offer a guide for healthcare professionals on how to disclose medical errors to their patients, while also developing ways to prevent future adverse events.

When a patient is unintentionally harmed during medical treatment, how should organizations respond?

Not that long ago, steps like these were unthinkable and, from a risk manager’s perspective, totally unwise. Today these practices are at the core of what are called communication and resolution programs (or CRPs), and their architects say there’s been a significant uptick in US health systems using them. Our guests are two leading experts on CRPs, Tom Gallagher and Allen Kachalia. They and a team of researchers have been teasing out the reasons why so many health care leaders are committed to the principles of CRPs, but hesitant to deploy the practices.

If you’ve been wondering what’s been going on with CRPs and new ways forward, this WIHI is for you.