Psychiatric claims to the Danish Patient Insurance Association have low recognition percentages

Since 1992 the Danish Patient Insurance Association (DPIA) has been receiving claims from patients who had suffered an injury during examination or treatment in Danish healthcare. We have presently collected more than 85,000 patient cases in our database, which we make accessible to research that can promote patient safety. We now want to draw attention to conditions that mainly apply to patients with mental disorders.

By searching the DPIA database over the past 15 years, we identified 1,278 patients with mental disorders. These patients were studied with respect to whether they had been treated within the psychiatric specialty or in a somatic specialty. During the study period, there was a change of opinion in the legal system after the Supreme Court ruled that surveillance of a psychiatric patient during admission, e.g. as anti-suicide precaution, should also be considered part of the treatment.

Of the registered claims, 742 had received specialised psychiatric treatment for their mental disorders, and 536 had been treated in one of the somatic specialties. Of the 1,278 patients, 16% had their claims accepted. A marked difference was found in the acceptance rate of claims between these two groups: in psychiatry, 13% of the claims were accepted, whereas in the somatic specialties, the acceptance rate was 21%. Both of these numbers are well below the usual DPIA acceptance rate, which is 36% (p = 0.001). During the study period, there was a change in the Danish legal system after the Danish Supreme Court ruled that surveillance of a psychiatric patient during admission, e.g. as an anti-suicide precaution, should be considered part of the treatment.

The low acceptance rate for claims made by patients with mental disorders concerning treatment or examination may, in part, be due to the lodging of unqualified claims, but other causes may also have contributed to this. Psychiatric patients who are treated for somatic disease should receive special attention to avoid treatment-related injuries.

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