• Proposal: Medical malpractice to enter the Register

    July 2, 2015

    The party Patriotic Front (PF) would propose a change in the Hospitals Act with which to establish a Register of Medical Errors. This was announced by MP Dr. Sultanka Petrova. Building the system had been discussed for years, leading specialists and the Doctors’ Union had kept demanding that from time to time, but it hadn’t taken place up to that moment. The last to speak of this Register were the new leaders of the professional organization, according to whom this would be finalized in two years’ from that time.

    “At the moment we have no idea who goes wrong and how, but when the Register starts running, it will become clear where the problems are rooted – to what extent they are due to the lack of motivation, specialization or professional exhaustion,” indicated Dr. Petrova. She added that the doctors at fault should be removed for a certain period from the system and continue their education. But the details of this process had to be put down in an Ordinance.

    The Institution better known as the medical State Agency “National Security” announced: “The creation of the Register is established in the updated Health Strategy 2014 – 2020 as one of the priorities which the Executive Agency ‘Medical Audit’ should work on”. According to it, one first needs to start with a clarification of the terminology in this area – i.e. to adopt a clear and unambiguous concept of what a medical error is and its varieties. The Agency added that it was necessary to classify the errors, so they could be reported. Experts said that if there was a good organization and cooperation between doctors, nurses, patients and control officers for a year and a half or two, the Registers might start working. “And its purpose is to serve as information for all workers in the system. Moreover, the medical community has to regularly get acquainted with the analysis of the results from the Register, to draw the necessary conclusions and to prevent errors’ re-admission”, maintained “Medical Audit”. The public would also be informed.