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Radical Surgery Is Urged for Medical Malpractice Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2005 For many victims of medical error, the current system of justice only adds insult to injury. Few injured patients ever receive compensation, and for those that do, compensation comes only after "a long, emotionally painful journey through the world of medical malpractice litigation."
As a result, the Los Angeles Times reports, "a growing number of healthcare organizations, patient advocacy groups and others" are now calling for "fundamental change." The Times discusses at length the proposal create special health courts, spearheaded by Common Good and endorsed by the Progressive Policy Institute, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., and more than 80 of the country's most prominent leaders in healthcare and law.
The Times writes:
A more far-reaching alternative would replace the present system with special courts in which judges with medical expertise would hear cases and determine awards based on uniform payment guidelines.
Such an approach has the potential to speed up the process, advocates say, to bring greater equity to a system that is subject to the varying judgments of individual juries, and to filter out some of the anger that often drives plaintiffs.
Most important of all, such strategies could make it easier to detect and combat medical errors.
Under the present system, doctors and hospitals are reluctant to admit mistakes because such admissions could be used against them in court. And the Bush proposal, which seeks to hold down malpractice insurance rates by setting dollar limits on jury awards for pain and suffering, does not address this issue.
"Caps are a sort of Band-Aid approach," said David Studdert, a professor of law and public health at Harvard. "They do absolutely nothing about the problem of medical errors and making healthcare safer.
"There are a lot of preventable deaths, and the malpractice system ought to be contributing something to reducing errors," Studdert said.
Common Good is working with the Harvard School of Public Health to design a special health court system, and is conducting an aggressive outreach campaign to promote the cause of reliable medical justice. (Visit our healthcare home page, or download a copy of our health court brochure now.)
The Times also looks at the story of Sue Sheridan, founder of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety and an endorser of Common Good's proposal:
Sue Sheridan has been through malpractice litigation twice, first on behalf of her son and then her husband.
Her son Cal developed kernicterus, a preventable type of brain damage resulting from jaundice that is not treated soon enough after birth. Now 10, Cal cannot walk without help. His speech is impaired and his arms and legs sometimes move uncontrollably.
While Cal's case was pending, his father, Patrick, developed a tumor on his spine. Doctors removed it, but there was a communications breakdown. No one told the Sheridans the tumor was malignant. Patrick died of cancer in 2002, leaving a family with two unresolved malpractice cases.
Sheridan obtained settlements in both lawsuits, but became an outspoken critic of the malpractice litigation system. ...
"I believed and trusted in the tort system, and when I got to see what it was really all about, I was shocked," said Sheridan, who lives in Boise, Idaho.
A jury initially found the doctor and hospital in her son's case were not at fault. But the judge, in a written ruling, termed the testimony of key defense experts "inconsistent," "unintelligible" and "of no consequence." He then took the highly unusual step of overturning the jury verdict and ordering a new trial. ...
Sheridan's experience led her to become interested in special medical courts as an alternative to the tort system. The judges would have the help of an agreed-upon list of mistakes that should not happen in a high-quality medical practice or hospital, and of a compensation schedule that would take into account such factors as the severity of a person's injury.
Learn more about Common Good's proposal to create special health courts.
Read "Radical Surgery is Urged for Medical Malpractice," in the Los Angeles Times.
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