First, let us thank you for joining and welcome you to our blog! We are thrilled you are here and are excited to give you so background in a little more detail about not only how we started, but the big question, WHY? We will also be discussing relevant industry topics and issues, and are open to any suggestions, requests, or questions you may have. Just reach out to us at info@confirmedconsent.com!
As clinicians, we propose treatment options on a regular basis during clinical practice. In doing so, we provide a diagnosis, then a treatment option, followed in an ideal setting by review of the procedure details, proposed benefits, associated risks, and alternatives to consider. After answering questions that may have come up, we allow our patients to make an informed decision to proceed in a neutral setting. This is the ideal! Sadly, this is not the reality!
Providers are expected to see more patients in less time, and as such redundant tasks such as consenting are impacted adversely. They may be delegated to an assistant. The information may be truncated.
In addition, bias is an issue that permeates every facet of life, and the medical community is not exempt as I’ve personally seen how certain biases influenced the consent process often on the assumed level of education or socioeconomic status of a patient. Moreover, standardization (a required tenet of consenting) is not always present. Can we ensure that in the following scenarios the consent is done in the same manner with the same amount of detail:
- A clinician running behind in clinic with 3 patients waiting in other rooms
- A clinician who just experienced road-rage while parking the car before walking into the office
- A clinician seeing the last patient of the morning without any responsibilities at lunch
- A clinician meeting a couple with one of them being an attorney
- A clinician seeing a Spanish speaking patient and using his front desk staff as an interpreter
Couple this with the fact that a patient was just provided a diagnosis, and while processing that is now hit with a barrage of procedure related information, and is then asked to sign a consent form while still processing the original diagnosis. Did you know that up to 60% of patients walking out of a surgeon’s office could not recall the details of the counseling? It’s not surprising that these variables have created a perfect storm, where a good portion of the 20-25k malpractice suits filed in the US annually allege poor communications and failure to obtain true informed consent.
These pain points were too negatively impactful not to have a solution. This is why I joined forces with a psychologist and attorney to revamp the consent process. We fundamentally agreed that it can and should be done better. As a result we created an interactive platform that was financially viable for the provider, while instrumentally improving the consenting and education process for the patient. We decided to reduce redundancy, mitigate the need to delegate, improve provider efficiency, and increase patient satisfaction. Thus, Confirmed Consent was born!
At Confirmed Consent:
- We educate patients in the clinician’s own words
- We empower patients by allowing them to make an informed decision in a neutral environment
- We allow an interactive experience so that no patients proceed without having all concerns addressed
- We reassure providers that the consent was truly an informed one by confirming the patient’s state of mind using a proprietary validated competency, cognition, understanding assessment
- We strive to ensure that no patient feels left out on the basis of hearing impairment, language barrier, or other disability that can be addressed with technology resources
We began Confirmed Consent with the above goals in mind, and have been fortunate to evolve the platform into a market-ready solution that is now endorsed by many of the country’s top patient safety and quality advocates, along with leading malpractice insurance carriers.
Please feel free to email us with questions at info@confirmedconsent.com and check out our website to request a demo at confirmedconsent.com. Stay tuned for our next blog post!
