Mass. General benefits from unusual ad campaign
Last summer, tough-nosed retired auto executive Lee Iacocca returned to the airways to promote Chrysler Corp.'s cars and trucks with some unlikely co-pitchmen: rapper Snoop Dogg and former ``Seinfeld" star Jason Alexander. Last month, another beneficiary of these wacky ads came to light: Massachusetts General Hospital.
Iacocca agreed to appear in the television spots if Chrysler promised to donate $1.5 million to the Lee Iacocca Foundation for diabetes research. Chrysler committed to donating at least $3 million more -- $1 for every car or truck sold over a 14-month period. All in all, the foundation expects to raise $10 million for Mass. General, which got the first installment in June.
Iacocca, whose wife, Mary K. Iacocca, died of complications from diabetes, has had a longstanding relationship with the hospital, and particularly with diabetes researcher Dr. Denise Faustman, who was having trouble funding her work before meeting the former Chrysler chairman.
In research published in 2003, Faustman cured juvenile diabetes in mice by injecting them with spleen cells. The cells migrated to their pancreases, prompting the damaged organs to regenerate into healthy, insulin-making organs. The new money from the Iacocca Foundation will pay for preparation for testing in humans and the human trial over the next three years.
It's time for doctors, nurses to learn to say ``I'm sorry."
From now on, patients who are victims of ``adverse events" in a Partners HealthCare System hospital should hear the following words from a doctor or nurse: ``I'm sorry." Hospitals in the state's largest provider network -- including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Faulkner Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and North Shore Medical Center -- recently approved a policy on responding to patients who are injured during medical care.
Partners joins the movement toward apologizing as a way to reduce malpractice claims and improve relationships between providers and patients, recommending in its policy that doctors and nurses say ``I'm sorry this happened." If the patient's doctor isn't emotionally up to the conversation, the policy advises, another party should step in. Dr. George Thibault, vice president of clinical affairs, said physician leaders are developing a training program for staff, but he said he didn't know whether it will be mandatory.
There's one issue the policy doesn't address, however: financial compensation for patients who are injured by medical care, which has become the third rail of these types of policies. Even though insurance usually covers their medical care, injured patients often have extra expenses such as day care for children. One major stumbling block under discussion: Who's responsible for these costs, the hospitals or their malpractice insurer?
``We said from the beginning we weren't dealing with the financial part of it because it's very complicated," Thibault said. ``We didn't want to hold up this work."
In brief
Helen Drinan, the woman who pushed for the ouster of Dr. Robert Haddad, the former head of Caritas Christi Health Care System, over allegations that he sexually harassed women, was honored Friday at the Simmons School of Management graduation. Lucia Luce Quinn, executive vice president of Boston Scientific and chairwoman of the Simmons College trustees, dedicated her commencement speech on ``courage, integrity and holding to one's principles as crucial choices in a business career" to Drinan. Drinan, who also is a college trustee, sat on the stage nearby.
President George Bush last month tapped two Boston doctors to join the National Cancer Advisory Board: Dr. Bruce Chabner, clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Dr. Judah Folkman, scientific director of the Vascular Anomalies Center at Children's Hospital and a cancer researcher. The 18-member board advises the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Cancer Institute on spending grant dollars and on policy issues.
Send White Coat Notes tips and ideas to Kowalczyk@globe.com. 
