Dr. Coleman starts of the article in a directed manner: "There is a poor correlation between competence of care and malpractice lawsuits." I supposed I had assumed before reading this article that most of doctors that get sued are "bad" doctors in the sense that they are generally doctors who don't offer the best care. According to Dr. Coleman this isn't true, and tort law in general is not only expensive for doctors and hospitals (studies have shown that reforms that limit liability in medicare patients have reduced hospital expenditures by 5 to 9% within 3-5 years) it does not effectively compensate patients for malpractice.
Pretty much the only way to win a liability case against a doctor/hospital is to prove that the someone was negligent. But negligence isn't always the reason for malpractice (the article doesn't go into detail with other examples of malpractice, but something that comes to mind would be inefficient/overcomplicated medical procedures that do more harm that good or contracting an infectious disease in a hospital setting). Additionally, administrative costs consume around 50% of malpractice awards leaving little for the actual patient.
Dr. Coleman's suggestion is to provide a general insurance fund to compensate patients when things go wrong in health care and then "creating a system that for identifying and correcting systemic and individual flaws in a nonthreatening and nonaccusatory fashion." Dr. Coleman doesn't go into details, and I'm personally not really sure what that system might look like or how it may be instituted.
Apparently the fear of getting sued is very prominent and stressful aspect of a physician's job. I wish I could read a study about how the fear of lawsuits impacted the quality of care given by doctors. A study that showed that doctors gave better care when they weren't worried about getting sued would provide even more motivation for tort reform in health care.
It is Patients who Most Need Tort Reform
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