An IP can be any type of witness . More likely if litigation gets to the witness stage , you ’ re likely a corporate witness or an expert witness . If you were the one conducting the investigation and made the observations , then you ’ re in the lay witness category , with some expert witness sprinkled in .”
is definitely a place where opposing counsel will ask you questions , and your counsel will ask questions . But the arbitrator , the judge , who is arbitrating , also will chime in and ask you questions . That dynamic is a very different dynamic than a deposition dynamic .”
The COVID-19 pandemic , for example , triggered litigation that primarily ended in arbitration – not because it was patient-focused , but because it related to healthcare worker occupational health issues .
“ Much of the healthcare worker-related litigation from the COVID era was around mandated vaccination and how systems rolled out their processes for that ,” Kroll says . “ There was the federal mandate around vaccination in healthcare settings , but there was not a federal process on how to do an exemption , and so everyone was figuring that out themselves . So , there was litigation around healthcare worker
vaccination and masking mandates , but not around the patient side as much . But here ’ s something that I always wonder about ; I ’ m a very savvy consumer of healthcare because of what I do , and I ’ m a very savvy advocate for my family , but if you don ’ t have someone like me in your family , it Isn ’ t as if you go to the hospital and your doctor ’ s like , ‘ Hey , it looks like you ’ ve got a urinary tract infection and it ’ s probably related to the catheter , so we ’ re going to take that catheter out , and we ’ re going to do these things .’ I don ’ t know that every consumer really makes that connection , and says , ‘ Wait , did something happen with my care ?’ The same thing with central lines . Surgical site infections more so , I would say . My experience is that we hear way more from patients who are post-surgical . It ’ s just easier to draw that causation , whereas I think a lot of patients don ’ t necessarily think about , ‘ I got this bug in the hospital .’
They ’ re like , ‘ I ’ m in the hospital and I have an infection .’ Certainly , I ’ m not saying that that those patients should be blaming their healthcare providers , but it ’ s complicated . I also think that one of the things that COVID is doing is developing more savvy consumers , so it ’ ll be interesting to me to see what happens . My guess is none of that will end up , or very little of that will end up in a courtroom-deposition situation ; I think it will settle before getting there because the risk management department is going to say to the infection preventionist , ‘ Hey , Mr . Smith says we gave them a CAUTI ’ and we ’ re going to say , “ They did get a CAUTI while they ’ re in , and maybe the root cause analysis , we don ’ t know why , but they got the infection in our hospital and risk management is going to say , ‘ I ’ m going to go back and find out what Mr . Smith needs to make this right .’”
SUBMISSIONS WANTED
Healthcare Hygiene magazine invites infection prevention stakeholders from all aspects of prevention and control ( including IP / healthcare epidemiology , healthcare value analysis , quality / safety / risk management , surgical services , sterile processing , environmental services , biomedical engineering and scientific research ) to submit sciencedriven , best practice-based articles for consideration for publication . Please , no public relations pitches or articles with commercial overtones . Send your queries to Kelly Pyrek at : kelly @ healthcarehygienemagazine . com
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