Let’s Make A Deal: Trading Malpractice Reform For Health Reform

Abstract

Physician leadership is required to improve the efficiency and reliability of the US health care system, but many physicians remain lukewarm about the changes needed to attain these goals. Malpractice liability-a sore spot for decades-may exacerbate physician resistance.

The Impact of State Medical Malpractice Reform on Individual‐Level Health Care Expenditures

“…To address these concerns, policy makers have taken actions at both state and national levels, as reflected by recent tort reform laws passed in Michigan and North Carolina (Letourneau ; Donovan ) and by the 2015 Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) at the federal level. Since MACRA includes only minor provisions touching on malpractice (Pear ; Schencker ), advocates have called for a stronger federal tort reform law (Sage and Hyman ). Republicans in Congress, including Tom Price, who just became the new secretary of Health and Human Services, have also attempted to push tort reform either as a part of their plan for replacing the ACA (Price ; Terhune ) or as a separate legislation (e.g., the one approved by the House Judiciary Committee in February 2017) (Kaplan ).…”

Current Resources for Evidence-Based Practice September/October 2015

“…A medical malpractice case is a long and traumatic experience for the health care provider and has personal and professional implications. Therefore, the fear of a potentially arbitrary medical liability claim does not foster a tendency in health care providers to collect and share information about the quality of the care they provide (Sage & Hyman, ), which is an integral part of health care quality improvement (Kachalia, Little, Isavoran, Crider, & Smith, ). As directly experienced by my friend, fear of medical liability claims also does not improve provider adherence to evidence‐based clinical guidelines.…”

“…As directly experienced by my friend, fear of medical liability claims also does not improve provider adherence to evidence‐based clinical guidelines. Instead, the threat of malpractice liability fosters the practice of defensive medicine, in which testing and treatment options are chosen to protect the provider from medical claim, not to protect the patient from medical harm (Sage & Hyman, ).…”

Current Resources for Evidence‐Based Practice, September/October 2015

“…7 A medical malpractice case is a long and traumatic experience for the health care provider and has personal and professional implications. Therefore, the fear of a potentially arbitrary medical liability claim does not foster a tendency in health care providers to collect and share information about the quality of the care they provide, 10 which is an integral part of health care quality improvement. 5 As directly experienced by my friend, fear of medical liability claims also does not improve provider adherence to evidence-based clinical guidelines.…”

“…Instead, the threat of malpractice liability fosters the practice of defensive medicine, in which testing and treatment options are chosen to protect the provider from medical claim, not to protect the patient from medical harm. 10 Fortunately, several states and local health care programs across the United States are currently experimenting with projects to improve both patient safety and the performance of the medical liability system. 9 In one such project, researchers retrospectively examined the theoretical effect of Safe Harbor legislation on medical liability claims in the state of Oregon.…”