"Caps may slow the growth of insurance rates, but they do not address the underlying problems with our adversarial tort system and do nothing to improve patient safety."
So says Massachusetts Senator Rob O'Leary. His solution: special health courts. We've mentioned these before. But Sen. O'Leary also offers some solid changes to improve health care and to quell the crisis:
- Doctors would be required to immediately admit and apologize when an avoidable mistake has occurred and would offer the injured patient early compensation.
- If the patient feels the offer is unfair, he would be eligible for an arbitrated appeal. Payouts would be predictable and consistent with the injury.
- A lower threshold of avoidability, rather than the current negligent standard, would encourage doctors to report errors and near misses.
- Information regarding injuries would be collected in a database for all doctors to learn from, increasing patient safety.
Read more. [Barnstable Patriot]
Why should payouts be based on the type of injury? Wouldn't it be more equitable to base them on the person's circumstances in terms of their pre-injury quality of life, or their lost earnings? Why should the injury to an 80 year old in a wheelchair have the same value as the same injury to a 20 year old college football star?
Of course, evaluating those factors is what juries do already, and there is no statistical evidence that they aren't already consistent, is there?
Posted by: Matt | March 21, 2006 at 09:57 AM