In the day-to-day life of the healthcare sector, conflicts arise due to communication or performance problems between healthcare professionals, affected patients and family members. The field of action of health mediation is of a more delicate nature, since it occurs in a context of illness and suffering of the patient, and therefore the ideal is to “pacify” as soon as possible.
Health accidents not only include negligence or clinical errors, but there are also other less serious problems such as delays or disagreements in patient care, attacks on health personnel, cancellation of previous appointments, negative attitude of the staff. sanitary, etc.
All these examples of situations that may occur in the health field can be resolved in a more satisfactory manner for the parties through the instrument of health mediation, rather than resorting to ordinary judicial means.
As stated by the general director of the Mediation School of the Spanish Mediation Association (ASEMED), Jesús Lorenzo Aguilar, mediation is currently an “unstoppable phenomenon” to which judges are increasingly becoming more aware. One of the great values of mediation is that it allows you to avoid a lawsuit (which is longer, more expensive and unsatisfactory in most cases for one of the parties).
Health mediation introduces changes in the way conflicts are addressed a priori: we go from merely passively receiving judicial notifications to working proactively to detect risk claims (through Patient Care services or writings presented to the Colleges). of Doctors).
A project started in 2011 created a group of hospitals to assume a specific structure that would act as a catalyst in the intermediation process for claims that occurred in the hospitals of the HM Hospitales group. This is proof that health mediation is moving in the right direction; However, it is a legal and social resource that still has a long way to go in the healthcare space.
