The Integrated Accountability and Collaborative Transparency Program

We Act Because We Care
Mission Statement: To provide a safe and supportive resolution process that values transparency and early disclosure of medical errors for patients, doctors, and healthcare organizations so that physical, emotional, and financial stress for all parties will be minimized.
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The Integrated Accountability and Collaborative Transparency Program (IACT) was developed as a pathway to medical disclosure and transparency in resolving patient/provider conflicts resulting from medical error. The IACT Program provides a formal process that is supportive and healing for patients, families and medical personnel through the use of skilled Collaborative Law attorneys and neutral medical experts who are dedicated to the peaceful, non-adversarial, and cooperative resolution of conflict. 
When unexpected adverse outcomes occur, the IACT Program provides a safe and effective process for understanding and resolving complex issues through interest-based negotiations without increasing the likelihood of malpractice lawsuits. The results are increased healthcare quality and reduced costs to the medical system through improved processes and system design. 

In addition, cost savings are achieved through decreased dollars spent in the practice of defensive medicine, in the expense of treating medical errors, and in the costs associated with medical malpractice litigation. 

Our Values

  • Communication and trust in the doctor-patient relationship

  • The commitment to transparency and honesty

  • The patient's right to be informed about their care from initial consent to final outcome, whether good or bad

  • Efforts to address the needs of the 99 percent of patients not currently compensated for the medical harms they have incurred​​​
  • The commitment to improve patient safety through disclosure of errors and near misses

  • The commitment to develop healthcare quality metrics to enhance efforts at improving quality of care in our country 

  • The dedication of the medical community to give the best care possible to the patients they serve​​
  • Efforts to inform those patients who may or may not have been harmed but still need information about what happened to them when there is an unexpected bad outcome in their care or treatment ​
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  • We seek to provide a process that gives providers an opportunity to repair relationships with patients and their families by reducing the emotional burden these providers carry about their Patients' bad outcomes

Goals

To provide an alternative to our current tort litigation system which will meet the needs of:
  • ​Patients for full disclosure, understanding, and in appropriate cases, an apology and compensation
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  • Physicians to proactively address issues and communicate with their patients in a safe and effective way so that both the physician and patient can gain closure​​​
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  • ​​Healthcare Organizations to learn from errors and near misses to improve systems and processes in healthcare delivery​​​
  • Society to simultaneously increase patient safety and reduce costs

How IACT Works

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This innovative approach to conflict resolution in the medical malpractice context combines two successful approaches from different dispute resolution areas, the "disclosure-and-offer" model from health care and "Collaborative Law" from family law. 

Collaborative Law encourages improved relationships between the parties by allowing personal discussions, opening the lines of communication, and facilitating examination of the underlying causes of the dispute. Collaborative Law is completely non-adversarial and is different from mediation in its process, its tone and its scope. It seeks not only settlement but also healing and understanding. Collaborative Law has been extremely successful in the realm of family law, and is now expanding its methods and philosophy to general civil and contractual disputes. Its application to the field of medical malpractice will be ground-breaking and transformative. 

Participation in IACT is voluntary, and the parties retain the right to move their dispute into the court system should they choose to withdraw from the process.