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Malpractice Update
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jun 21, 2005 05:15pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Tuesday, June 21, 2005 11:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The Wall Street Journal has a terrific article today about how one group of doctors has successfully decreased their malpractice premiums over the past couple of decades. Their secret? Less malpractice:
"Rather than pushing for laws that would protect them against patient lawsuits...anesthesiologists focused on improving patient safety. Their theory: Less harm to patients would mean fewer lawsuits.
....All this has helped save lives....Malpractice payments involving the nation's 30,000 anesthesiologists are down, too, and anesthesiologists typically pay some of the smallest malpractice premiums around. That's a huge change from when they were considered among the riskiest doctors to insure.
....Twenty years ago, little was known about people injured or killed during anesthesia. No U.S. database existed, so anesthesiologists set out to create one. They decided to collect information from insurers on closed malpractice claims, those in which insurers had made a payment or otherwise disposed of the complaint."
There's more to the story, and this isn't the sole answer to fixing America's malpractice problems. Still, if doctors and insurance companies spent half as much time trying to reduce medical errors as they did trying to rig the legal system in their favor, they might save lives and reduce malpractice premiums. I don't really expect insurance companies to care much about this, but doctors ought to. |
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