On these pages, Michelle Mello recently posted a discussion of her new article with Lindsey Murtagh, Thomas Gallagher, and Penny Andrew, called “Disclosure-And-Resolution Programs That Include Generous Compensation Offers May Prompt A Complex Patient Response.”
In this vignette-based online study, the authors put respondents in clinical scenarios with medical errors, and then added experimental conditions where the error was simply confessed, or confessed with an offer of waiver of the medical bills, with an offer to reimburse a limited amount of out-of-pocket expenses related (specifying $25,000 out of pocket plus $5,000 lost time), or with an offer of “full compensation.” As the headline suggests, the authors conclude that offers of full compensation may be sometimes be bad ideas for self-interested hospitals. I’m a big fan of this sort of vignette-based research, because it allows randomized manipulation that is impossible in observational field research. Still, allow me to offer some of my own questions and interpretations below the fold.