Hospital Image Repair Strategies, Organizational Apology, and Medical Errors: An Analysis of the CoxHealth Brain Over-Radiation Case.

Medical errors are currently ranked the third leading cause of death in United States; however, hospital responses when one occurs have been left out of organizational crisis and image repair literature. This article reports an image repair analysis of the 2010 CoxHealth radiation medical error case, when 76 patients accidentally received fatally high doses of radiation for the treatment of brain cancer. CoxHealth used a variety of image repair strategies including shifting the blame, minimization, bolstering, and corrective action. Moreover, CoxHealth heavily used transcendence to transform the conversation from the error to activism to frame themselves as change agents championing for patient safety.