9
EXPLANATION - Matter enclosed in bold-faced brackets
[
thus
]
in the above bill
is not enacted and is intended to be omitted in the law.
Matter underlined thus is new matter.
c. The State Board of Medical Examiners shall notify all physicians
licensed by the board of the requirements of this section within 30 days
of the date of enactment of this act.
(cf: P.L.1995, c.69, s.1)
13. Section 13 of P.L.1989, c.300 (C.45:9-19.13) is amended to read
as follows:
13.
a. In any case in which the State Board of Medical Examiners
refuses to issue, suspends, revokes or otherwise conditions the license,
registration, or permit of a physician, podiatrist or medical resident or
intern, the board shall, within 30 days of its action, notify each licensed
health care facility, psychiatric hospital operated by the Department of
Human Services and listed in R.S.30:1-7, and health maintenance
organization with which the person is affiliated and every board licensee
in the State with which the person is directly associated in his private
medical practice.
b. If, during the course of an investigation of a physician, the board
requests information from a health care facility, psychiatric hospital
operated by the Department of Human Services or health maintenance
organization regarding that physician, and the board subsequently
determines that no disciplinary action is warranted, the board shall,
within 30 days, notify the health care facility, State psychiatric hospital
or health maintenance organization of its determination.
(cf: P.L.1989, c.300, s.13)
14. (New section) The Legislature finds and declares that:
a. Adverse events, some of which are the result of preventable errors,
are inherent in all systems, and the health care literature demonstrates
that the great majority of medical errors result from systems problems,
not individual incompetence;
b. Well-designed systems have processes built in to minimize the
occurrence of errors, as well as to detect those that do occur; they
incorporate mechanisms to continually improve their performance;
c. To enhance patient safety, the goal is to craft a health care
delivery system that minimizes, to the greatest extent feasible, the harm
to patients that results from the delivery system itself;
d. An important component of a successful patient safety strategy is
a feedback mechanism that allows detection and analysis not only of
adverse events, but also of "near-misses";
e. To encourage disclosure of these events so that they can be
analyzed and used for improvement, it is critical to create a non-punitive
culture that focuses on improving processes rather than assigning blame.
Health care facilities and professionals must be held accountable for
serious preventable adverse events; however, the current punitive
medical malpractice environment, with its focus on assigning blame and
fixing liability, is not particularly effective in promoting accountability
and increasing patient safety, and is actually a deterrent to the exchange
of information required to reduce the opportunity for errors to occur in
the complex systems of care delivery. Fear of sanctions induces health
care professionals and organizations to be silent about adverse events,
resulting in serious under-reporting; and
f. By establishing an environment that both mandates the confidential
disclosure of the most serious, preventable adverse events, and also
encourages the voluntary, anonymous and confidential disclosure of less
serious adverse events, as well as near misses, the
