Mistakes are a fact of life.
Companies and individuals alike make them on a regular basis. And for companies making a mistake, the all-too-familiar public apology has become a way of life.
A quick scan of the headlines on a given day usually finds Company X apologizing for a data breach or Company Y issuing a mea culpa for selling salmonella-tainted coconuts.
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As a consumer and citizen, these public displays of remorse make me feel good inside. I am happy to see a company, at least in the moment, showing a concern for its consumers over its profit. It really does help engender a sense of goodwill and trust, with me at least.
But as I think through the public apology with my attorney hat on, I am mortified.
I feel sorry for the poor in-house saps who had to navigate their way through the crisis. Balancing the demands of their C-suite that the company save face with the knowledge that plaintiffs’ attorneys around the nation will be champing at the bit for a piece of the action.
I certainly do not envy my fellow impacted in-house colleagues. Generally, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing I have not had to square off with my CEO in such a high-profile matter and I scroll on to the next headline.
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Perhaps I had laughed one too many times at my colleagues’ misfortune, or perhaps karma is a real thing, but in any event, my time to square off against my c-suite for a company mistake finally came a few weeks ago.
Fortunately, the scope and scale of our error compared to those often in the headlines was minor. Nevertheless, our hospital was squared off against a patient armed with a well-known local investigative journalist whom they had summoned for help.
At a high level, we had disclosed the patient’s medical information to one of their family members who did not have authorization to view it. In our defense, there certainly was no malicious intent behind our actions. Our employee simply believed the family member had permission to view the patient’s medical information without first checking our systems to verify.
But no matter the facts, we were wrong. We disclosed patient information to an individual not authorized to view it.
To his credit, our CEO wanted to issue an apology to the patient and to issue it fast, in front of the cameras of the local news crew no less.
I, however, was a little less enthusiastic about this approach. The thought of our CEO on camera saying our hospital had made an error caused me to lose my appetite. Which for a man of my size and stature is not something that happens regularly.
All I could imagine was a Matlock-like scene in which an investigator from the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the agency which has jurisdiction for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), played the clip of our CEO apologizing to a stunned jury who would undoubtedly mandate we shut down our operations for our transgressions.
Mind you, no jury would ever be involved in a HIPAA investigation, but as an in-house counsel we are trained to think of the worst-case scenario, and this is about as bad as I could imagine.
My gut, as I would imagine the guts of many of my fellow lawyers would be, was to clam up in the moment and not speak a word of the incident until a judge mandated we do so.
However, my gut was wrong. Our hospital depends upon the trust of our current and future patients and a public apology, while painful, was our best option. We have sufficiently deep pockets to withstand whatever penalty OCR may levy, but we certainly do not have deep enough pockets to withstand a patient boycott.
So to my fellow in-house colleagues laughing at the misfortune of their peers working for a company that was recently featured issuing an all-too-public apology, I get it. I was once in your comfortable shoes.
But as someone who has now weathered, the albeit small, storm, if misfortune ever strikes your company, maybe you give those corporate communications folks a little more credit than you presently do and allow that public apology you swore your company would never give.
Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at [email protected].