Medical liability in the United States problematic for both doctors and patients, and fixing it will require a multi-level approach, according to a recent claim by the American College of Physicians.
The current approach “just doesn’t work, it’s unfair to patients…and it spends an enormous amount of money to compensate a small minority of injured patients,” said ACP president Molly Cooke, MD. “Physicians still fear litigation, expect lawsuits, and feel the psychological burden of navigating the complex medico-legal system.”
The ACP criticized the current landscape of medical liability at their annual scientific meeting, but they also provided nine recommendations for fixing the issue. According to the ACP, physicians and lawmakers should focus on these nine areas to improve medical liability in the United States.
- Continued focus on patient safety and prevention of medical errors;
- Passage of a comprehensive tort reform package, including caps on noneconomic damages;
- Minimum standards and qualifications for expert witnesses;
- Oversight of medical liability insurers;
- Testing, and if warranted, expansion of communication and disclosure programs;
- Pilot-testing of a variety of alternative dispute resolution models;
- Development of effective safe harbor protections that improve quality of care, increase efficiency, and reduce costs;
- Expanded testing of health courts and administrative compensation systems;
- Research into the effect of team-based care on medical liability, as well as testing of enterprise liability and other products that protect and encourage team-based care.
Dr. Cooke noted that the nine-point program “should allow for innovation, pilot-testing, and further research on the most effective reforms.”
Dr. Silverman comments
Medical liability can always be improved. It’s certainly tough as a surgeon to do your job to the best of your ability when you know you’re millimeters away from a lawsuit if something goes awry. Negligence should be held accountable, but far too often doctors feel the wrath of a lawsuit for their inability to fix a problem.
In essence, we need to create a well-balanced approach where we reduce the number of medical errors, thus cutting down on the number of lawsuits, and we strengthen the system for compensating patients who are truly harmed through negligence or a poor operation.
Related source: Medscape