Doctors have long had an incentive to not be honest when they make mistakes in surgeries and diagnonses: they faced expensive lawsuits. However, the NYTimes reports (and I have seen a similar article in another paper months ago) that many doctors and hospitals are learning that they can avoid lawsuits by using a novel approach to address making mistakes. They can openly admit that mistakes were made to the patients! Research has found that people often wage expensive lawsuits because they are angry and feel mistreated, not because they see the promise of a big payday. One can hope that the medical industry came to the conclusion that it's better to be honest because it's the right thing to do, but even if they are changing because it saves them money, it's still a win-win for both sides. Two further points from the article:
1) The opening story regarding Dr. Das Gupta is particularly compelling and portrays a man who was honest because it was the right thing to do, damn the consequences.
2) This process MAY have been helped along in many states because the governments in those states already put in place caps on legal damages, so that doctors and hospitals could afford to be honest. The article barely touches on that point.
Further proof that regular folks are often not just chasing dollar signs:

Recent studies have found that one of every 100 hospital patients suffers negligent treatment, and that as many as 98,000 die each year as a result. But studies also show that as few as 30 percent of medical errors are disclosed to patients.

Only a small fraction of injured patients — perhaps 2 percent — press legal claims.