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Hospitals Press for Solutions to Rising Liability Lucy Ament
AHA News Now, July 10, 2006 AHA News reports that the “Reliable Medical Justice Act” (S. 1337), sponsored by Senators Enzi (R-WY) and Baucus (D-MT), which could lead to funding of health court pilot projects, incorporates a number of concepts being explored by the American Hospital Association’s Task Force on Liability Reform. Notably, the task force is currently examining the merits of an administrative compensation system, according to Steven Summer, president and CEO of the West Virginia Hospital Association and chair of the AHA task force. “‘The idea would be to take the case out of the current judicial system and move it through some administrative process with a history of dealing with the health care field,’” Summer told AHA News. Of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s support for the health court concept, AHA News quotes Joanne Pollak, vice president and general counsel for the hospital, as saying: “‘The severity of cases is going up, and we’re concerned that a good chunk of what is being spent on malpractice recoveries goes into lawyers’ fees … . A health court would cap legal fees at a certain percentage, and would also quickly try to compensate people fairly for the injuries they’ve sustained.’” Johns Hopkins is one of six hospitals and academic medical centers that have expressed interest in participating in health court pilot projects.
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