Progressive Policy Institute Endorses Special Health Courts February 17, 2005 A policy report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), co-authored by PPI Senior Fellow David Kendall and former Common Good Senior Advisor Nancy Udell, calls for "a new network of specialized health courts that would replace America's broken justice system."
PPI is an organization dedicated to modernizing progressive politics and governance for the 21st century. Moving beyond the left-right debates of the last century, PPI is a prolific source of Third Way thinking that is reshaping politics in the United States. (Learn more at www.ppionline.org.)
The needed "Third Way" in medical justice, Kendall and Udell write, is a system of health courts that would preserve both patients' access to healthcare and their access to justice.
The current liability system "does not give most injured patients access to justice. ... Only people with serious injuries and the potential for large awards are likely to find a lawyer to take their case because the legal costs involved are so high. Even for those with a serious injury (a disability lasting six months or more), the malpractice system compensates only one in 14 people."
At the same time, the system fails to promote patient safety. "[I]t does not send clear signals about standards of care that would help health care providers avoid medical mistakes," and it discourages "frank discussion about failures and near misses."
Finally, "[p]atients are losing access to doctors in high-risk specialties, such as obstetrics, particularly in states where malpractice insurance premiums are rising the fastest."
Kendall and Udell outline in detail how health courts would resolve these problems, making medical justice reliable for patients and doctors. Their PPI Policy Report also describes the steps needed to implement a health court system.
Health courts would be run by "specially qualified judges, whose decisions would help shape clear legal standards for medical practice. ... [T]here would be no juries. In the current system, juries have the impossible task of trying to discern legal standards when they should be deciding facts."
Expert witnesses "would be hired by the health courts" instead of serving as hired guns for plaintiffs and defendants. And in cases where malpractice has occurred, damages would be awarded "according to a schedule of benefits, taking into account both economic and non-economic factors."
The result: patients would have access to "quicker and less expensive justice," while healthcare quality would be improved by reliable standards of care.
Common Good is working with the Harvard School of Public Health to design a special health court system and has recently created a brochure, "An Urgent Call for Special Health Courts," for use in our broad outreach efforts.
Read the PPI Policy Report by David Kendall and Nancy Udell.
Visit PPI's healthcare page.
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