CRPs guide institutions in meeting the needs of both patients and providers after a very difficult and potentially life-changing experience. CRPs promote increased transparency between patients and providers, leading to improved rapport with patients and patient safety measures with organizations. They demonstrate leadership support of staff, mitigate organizational risk, enhance trust between patients and providers, and facilitate post event shared learning.

Patients:

• Patients deserve to know what happened when they are harmed by their healthcare. CRPs provide a framework for providers to make a disclosure of the facts productively.
• Early research is showing that using a CRP process has resulted in better provider-patient/family relationships and helps retain patients.

Providers:

• The CRP process provides staff with resources and support in navigating difficult conversations with patients and evidence-based tools to manage and prevent the recurrence of unanticipated errors.
• The CRP process alleviates the blame typically placed on individual providers & supports staff.
• CRPs open the door for physicians to express sympathy, concern, or regret, which can heal the relationship with their patients.
• It is an inclusive approach bringing the provider and patient together.

Institutions:

• Well-implemented CRPs facilitate an organization’s learning and can help ensure your clinicians are on top of patient safety.
• CRPs can encourage early event reporting and identify systematic change from lessons learned to improve patient safety.
• CRPs are more likely to resolve an adverse event to a patient’s satisfaction. Research conducted in Michigan and Massachusetts has shown that employing CRPs can result in fewer lawsuits and lower liability costs over the long-term.
• CRPs help ensure that medical errors are not repeated by expanding the event analysis to examine all system and human factors that led to the error.