Wednesday, May 31, 2006
A better idea for medical liability reform: make fewer mistakes
"Making Patient Safety the Centerpiece of Medical Liability Reform," New England Journal of Medicine: In a perspective piece for NEJM, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) discuss medical liability, stating that the focus of reform efforts should be on improving patient safety, which would reduce the number of malpractice claims, rather than on the "possibility of mandating caps on the financial damages awarded to patients." Rodham Clinton and Obama write that a bill (S 1784) they are co-sponsoring would provide grant money and technical assistance to doctors, hospitals, insurers and health care systems to implement programs to disclose errors in patient care and to negotiate compensation for such errors outside the courtroom. The authors write that over time, the bill would reduce annual litigation costs, resolution time of claims and lawsuits, and the number of claims and lawsuits (Rodham Clinton/Obama, NEJM, 5/25).
