Doctors' fears of medical malpractice lawsuits are responsible for higher healthcare costs and hamper quality of care improvements, according to experts.
During a Dec. 4, 2009 forum in Washington, D.C., that was hosted by the Common Good and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, legal, medical and policy experts said medical malpractice lawsuits put doctors on the defensive, are the root cause for the use of more expensive and sometimes unneeded care and cost billions of dollars each year in malpractice insurance and case settlements.
Medical malpractice cases create an environment where there’s no room for quality improvement or analyses of dangerous incidents, they said.
The forum came as the Department of Health and Human Services launched a $25 million initiative to test patient safety and medical liability innovations.
Philip Howard, a partner at the Washington D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling and chairman of the Common Good, said "fear has dramatically changed the culture of healthcare in ways that are staggeringly unproductive for cost and quality."
Howard said one solution would have health systems pay for harm rendered based on a preset scale.
Admitting to fault, explaining to the patient or patient's family what happened and compensating for damages is less expensive in the long run and prevents lawsuits that often disrupt both parties' lives for five or more years, he said.
According to Richard Boothman, chief risk officer at the University of Michigan Health System, the system has made headway using such a program.
"Once you give patients a chance to hear the explanation of what happened, they are far more forgiving than we give them credit for," he said.
The health system also has an extensive informed consent process prior to potentially dangerous treatment, he said.
Boothman said eliminating any hostility in the environment and protecting physicians ahead of time has helped cultivate a willingness among providers to report so-called “near-miss” situations.
"The biggest cost of medical liability is the chilling effect it has on any professional improvement," Boothman said.