Will 2008 be the year for Health Courts
As we begin 2008, this could be the year that health courts really get some publicity and some backing.
Many people are slowly learning that ever-increasing malpractice premiums hurt patients and communities as more specialist are choosing not to practice in certain states and the quality of physicians that remain may not be up to standards.
Health courts have been talked about for a long time but they have not gotten much publicity for various reasons. With these specialized courts, the judgments are made outside the regular tort system by specially trained judges who only hear medical related cases. They make decisions on an avoidability standard that awards injuries if they could have been avoided with best practice care.
Negligence, by contrast, focuses on whether care fell below customary practice.
Attorneys would no longer have to find jurors and then educate them on the increasingly complex medical situations to determine if negligence occurred.
Juries would no longer be making mega-awards based on sympathy for the plaintiff. The health experts would award compensation based on uniform guidelines as in done workers comp type of cases.
Why these courts have not caught on is no surprise.
The legal lobby as well as many legislators are attorneys with much to lose. Voting against the trial lawyers is never a politically good move.
Benefits of health courts include ease of filing, speed and greater reliability in decisions, and much less red tape. This would help curb healthcare costs and malpractice premiums.
Health courts would encompass a no-fault system that encourages physicians to report medical errors without fear of lawsuits or retribution.
The reporting would enable people to identify and correct workplace and system deficiencies, so that the same types of errors don't recur.
According to Paul Barringer, executive director of Common Good ( http://www.cgood.org), he believes the public has become more aware of the connection between patient safety, quality, and medical liability and his organization is leading the charge for health courts.
He believes that health courts will probably come from small state pilot programs like the one in New York and then grow from there.
Finding ways to make healthcare more error-free should be the goal rather than continuing this defensive medicine strategy currently being practiced.
Many people are slowly learning that ever-increasing malpractice premiums hurt patients and communities as more specialist are choosing not to practice in certain states and the quality of physicians that remain may not be up to standards.
Health courts have been talked about for a long time but they have not gotten much publicity for various reasons. With these specialized courts, the judgments are made outside the regular tort system by specially trained judges who only hear medical related cases. They make decisions on an avoidability standard that awards injuries if they could have been avoided with best practice care.
Negligence, by contrast, focuses on whether care fell below customary practice.
Attorneys would no longer have to find jurors and then educate them on the increasingly complex medical situations to determine if negligence occurred.
Juries would no longer be making mega-awards based on sympathy for the plaintiff. The health experts would award compensation based on uniform guidelines as in done workers comp type of cases.
Why these courts have not caught on is no surprise.
The legal lobby as well as many legislators are attorneys with much to lose. Voting against the trial lawyers is never a politically good move.
Benefits of health courts include ease of filing, speed and greater reliability in decisions, and much less red tape. This would help curb healthcare costs and malpractice premiums.
Health courts would encompass a no-fault system that encourages physicians to report medical errors without fear of lawsuits or retribution.
The reporting would enable people to identify and correct workplace and system deficiencies, so that the same types of errors don't recur.
According to Paul Barringer, executive director of Common Good ( http://www.cgood.org), he believes the public has become more aware of the connection between patient safety, quality, and medical liability and his organization is leading the charge for health courts.
He believes that health courts will probably come from small state pilot programs like the one in New York and then grow from there.
Finding ways to make healthcare more error-free should be the goal rather than continuing this defensive medicine strategy currently being practiced.
Labels: health courts, legislation, malpractice
posted by Anonymous at 6:10 AM
6 Comments:
Have health courts been implimented anywhere? Or are they still at the conceptual stage?
As a consumer, I can see some very positive outcomes from them, but at the same time, I am concerned that too much rides on one person's opinion.
I have a friend who has been negatively affected by the current system. He is a quadraplegic and all because someone made a mistake,but it cannot be proven...at least that is what the medical review said. All I know is that he was walking when he went into the hospital... and now he cannot... as a result of an epidural.
I wonder what would happen in his case under the health court system.
The Indiana Constitution reads as follows:
Section 12. All courts shall be open; and every person, for injury done to him in his person, property, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law. Justice shall be administered freely, and without purchase; completely, and without denial; speedily, and without delay.
Our jury system works and I would not want some quasi system to decide these rights for me or my family. Sure, we all hear about silly outcomes on TV from time to time, the McDonald's verdicts that make us all groan, but day in and day out, the system works as a whole, whether the American Medical Association and/or insurance industry wants to admit it or not.
Its a Constitutional right, just like freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and even the right to bear arms.
That aside, there is an interesting article about medical costs entitled "High Costs - who's to Blame" in the March edition of Consumer Reports magazine - a fairly unbiased source. Based on their findings, lawyers & malpractice premiums and liability awards account for "less than 2 percent of health care spending". Doctors and hospitals share is 52%,
The most fascinating statistic is that health insurance companies' spending on "marketing costs and profits consumes 12% of all private insurance premiums", while drug companies account for nearly 10%.
Really, the "malpractice crisis" as reported by the AMA and insurance industry pales in comparison to the costs associated with the profits of the health insurance companies and drug companies.
But, its easier to blame the legal system...
Just food for thought.
Is the Mercy Health System from where the new CEO comes the same one that owns and manages Providence Retirement Home?
To lawguy,
The problem with the way they report these numbers is the fact that if you were to break it down on cost per patient in each of these categories, you would see the statistics dramatically change.
Doctors see every patient. Drugs are only used by some. We see many many children who never recieve a prescription for anything as well as adults. This adds to the expense attributed to doctors but the ratio of cost per patient would be much less.
Take hospitals, insurance companies, lawsuits, and especially drugs and put the same cost per patient and that would be a better comparison.
For the last anonymous comment, it is the same health system as far as I know
You beat me to the punch, lawguy. I concur.
Now that the economy is going south and insurance companies will start earning less of a return off of the investment of premiums (which is how they make money), we will once again hear cries for "tort reform." Just wait and see.
Was it just me that noticed the irony in the Courier-Journal three weeks ago that the UL Private Practice physicians (300+ doctors) could not accept the declining rates of reimbursement offered by Humana for their medical services (and therefore now decline Humana insured patients), and just a week later, Humana announced a 57% increase in profits last year, profits of $243 million in the 4th quarter alone?
Why do we not any physicians barking or politicians complaining about this at the statehouse? Instead, we see the Kentucky Medical Association rallying about tort-reform and the cost of lawsuits on doctors. Give me a break!
I am all for profit, but when Humana makes a $243 million profit in just one quarter at the expense of its insureds who must now pay out of network rates (out of their own pockets) to see physicians at UL, something is wrong, and its not the lawyers...
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