A couple of days ago we discussed the current focus of the healthcare reform movement, cost, and the potential to ‘rethink’ this approach to include a broader perspective. Although that post focused on changes in patient behavior, in his blog Robert Gallagher discusses the issue of malpractice in today’s healthcare system. He argues that both physicians (through expensive malpractice insurance) and patients (through the lengthy legal process) are negatively affected by the inadequacy of the legal system as it pertains to healthcare malpractice suits.
While only 2 percent of injured patients seek legal compensation today, those that do often seek millions of dollars in pain and suffering. Juries often times award millions of dollars to these injured patients as if they are lottery-winners.
In addition to the expensive nature of these suits, Gallagher highlights the issue that the current legal system is ill-equipped to handle medical malpractice cases due to the lack of guiding principles and standards. However, he also offers a suggestion for improvement mirroring the worker’s compensation system.
A healthcare court would create precedents by following the worker’s compensation system. A healthcare court would first have a schedule of benefits to compensate patients for medical injuries. Second, injured patients would receive consistent compensation based on previous awards.
The healthcare court would also refer to a guide of malpractice scenarios, using Accelerated Compensation Events (ACEs). Consider, for instance, a patient who requires additional care because of bleeding after heart surgery; this injured patient would not have to prove medical malpractice because bleeding following surgery is a documented error on behalf of the surgical team. Trivial cases would be dismissed by the review board without backlogging the healthcare court system.
As healthcare reform continues to be a hot topic, it will be interesting to see to what extent factors (outside of cost) are assessed. With additional areas of focus the push for reform could become muddled and harder to manage, or it could potentially provide the comprehensive change needed to ‘fix’ the healthcare system as we know it. Either way, the question remains ‘Is it all about cost?’
You are correct. It is not all about cost.
We should be thankful that we have the world's best healthcare, despite high prices.
The only problem arises when those that cannot afford healthcare get punished by the current insurance and medical system.
Looking at Europe, there are ways to create a great medical system that is not so expensive. Many European nations have healthcare courts that can prevent the medical malpractice cases and thus lower insurance premiums.
Just remember, in the world's most advanced country, 1 in 7 Americans do not have basic healthcare coverage.
Posted by: Robert Gallagher | June 26, 2008 at 07:11 AM