NEW ORLEANS – The first-ever analysis of medical malpractice closed claims involving bariatric surgeons spotlights key opportunities for improvement for the surgical specialty, Eric J. DeMaria, MD, declared at Obesity Week 2016.

Four of the nation’s largest medical malpractice insurance companies agreed to allow members of an American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery task force to make site visits to their corporate offices, where the surgeons sat in closed rooms to read and take notes on a total of 175 cases closed during 2010-2015. Those case notes were later shared with the full task force, which sifted through the details in order to identify common causal themes and opportunities for improvement, explained Dr. DeMaria, a bariatric surgeon in Suffolk, Va.

This first report at Obesity Week 2016 merely provides an overview of the group’s initial analysis of the data. The plan is for the task force to bring forth lessons learned and specific recommendations for improved patient safety to the full American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery membership over time, he said at the meeting, presented by the Obesity Society of America and the ASMBS.

Among the key findings:

• The defense prevailed in 63% of cases. The mean expense for defending a lawsuit was $91,836.

• In the 37% of cases involving monetary awards, the mean figure was $293,500, ranging from $20,000 to $8 million.

• Mortality was involved in 35% of cases. Other notable complications resulting in lawsuits included leak in 18% of cases, bowel obstruction in 10%, bleeding in 5.3%, retained foreign body in 5.3%, and vascular injury from access in 4.4%.

• Preoperative issues such as informed consent and disclosure of information were rare.

• The defendant surgeon was a foreign medical graduate in 27.5% of cases, board certified in 75.9%, and only 43% of the hospitals where the surgery took place were accredited. All those figures are at odds with national norms.

• The panel determined that the cause of the complication was provider-related in 50% of cases, system-related in 29%, and intrinsic to the patient’s disease in 21%.

• In the panel’s view, the complication was preventable by the surgeon in nearly 60% of cases and not preventable by the surgeon in 20%, with the remainder of cases deemed impossible to judge.

• Better preoperative care would have prevented the complication in 20% of cases, in the panel’s view. Better postoperative care would have prevented the complication in 45%.

• Just over 5% of the malpractice claims involved nonstandard malabsorptive operations. “Some of them I’d never heard of before,” according to Dr. DeMaria.

• Care was deemed by the panel to be appropriate in roughly 21% of the malpractice cases and grossly negligent or incompetent in 8%. Twenty-three percent of lawsuits involved preventable error of such magnitude that significant coaching and instruction would be required in order to prevent a recurrence.

Dr. DeMaria observed that this analysis of closed claims suggests that in order to reduce future malpractice claims against bariatric surgeons, it makes sense to focus on a few key areas of practice where most of the serious problems occur.

“We found the same themes repeated over and over; for example, delays in diagnosis and treatment of leaks,” he said.

A substantial number of the lawsuits could have been prevented through the use of preinsufflation and optical trocars, or access away from the midline, he added.

But the number one theme to emerge from the lawsuit analysis was poor communication with the health care team and/or family. The experts on the task force considered the communication performance to be appropriate in only 20% of cases.

“I would emphasize the strong contribution of communication issues, and the strong contribution of coverage and handoff issues,” Dr. DeMaria said. “One example of an intervention that might be introduced would be to standardize the language used in the operating room just before you start to staple the stomach, very similar to what airplane pilots do in their communication. We saw cases over and over again where the anesthesia person was asked to take out the [nasogastric] tube didn’t realize that meant the esophageal stethoscope, too.

“We need to do a better job of not just making sure a coverage person has been identified, but actually communicating with that person and doing a standardized handoff procedure,” Dr. DeMaria continued. “Management of postoperative phone calls is another important area: Who answers the phone? What are they supposed to do with that information? How do you get patients to appropriate care?”

Discussant Ramsey M. Dallal, MD, congratulated Dr. DeMaria and his fellow ASMBS task force members on “the massive amount of work” entailed in this project. And he urged his colleagues to take to heart the lessons learned.

“People hear the word ‘malpractice’ and they get fearful. They think of lawyers and of being attacked. The reality is this is not a malpractice study; this is a patient safety study. A study like this is an excellent way to improve patient safety. The problem with registry data is we don’t get the details – and it’s the case details that point out problems and potential solutions,” said Dr. Dallal, director of bariatrics and vice chair of the department of surgery at the Einstein Healthcare Network in the Philadelphia area.

The closed claims analysis was conducted free of commercial support. Dr. DeMaria reported serving as a consultant to Covidien and Ethicon.

bjancin@frontlinemedcom.com

Malpractice issues tied to bariatric surgery explored