Owning Up
Posted by Adam Wiggins on July 14, 2008 at 02:35 AM
The healthcare industry is starting to see benefits from being honest when they make mistakes. Denying that doctors and hospitals ever screw up has been the historical approach to avoiding malpractice suits; yet by being more honest, hospitals are seeing a decrease in such lawsuits.
If doctors can do it, why not software authors? Own up to your mistakes. People will trust you more in the long run.
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Totally agree. I think it makes sense to also make it predictable for doctors what the consequences are for their mistakes, instead of having a jury come up with something.
Even more important is accurate data regarding outcomes for certain procedures NOT reported by doctors themselves but gathered independently.
Also good would be to have some separation from assessment and delivery. Thee is a natural conflict of interest when the person who will be paid to deliver solutions is also decidng whether those solutions are needed. I guess that was the idea initially behind the primary care physician, but something got lost along the way.
Regarding software developers, there are no real liability concerns from admitting mistakes, so only the ego stands in the way.
Not comparable at all to the back surgeon acknowledging, "Oh yeah, looks like this surgery has left you with even more pain. Sorry about that. Have a nice life."
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