Malpractice 2017: Do we need reform?
What would Dr. Price do?
Opinions are mixed about whether Dr. Price’s proposed reforms are the right changes for the medical liability system.
Expert panels to review claims for validity are a promising suggestion, Dr. Jena said. “Administrative courts to help identify malpractice cases that are truly malpractice early on is a good idea,” he said. “We want to have a system that prevents less meritorious cases from soaking up resources.”
But the idea may be easier said than done, said Dr. Anderson of The Doctors Company. “The devil is always in the details There is a lot of merit in [health courts] and they make a lot of sense. However, the notion of going from where we are today to an untested system, which would have to be a compromise between adversaries, would be a very challenging one.”
,National clinical standards for physicians to follow and use as a safeguard could backfire, Mr. Stinson said. Bureaucracy could slow the guidelines from being promptly updated, and the standards could fail to keep up with the latest medical developments. As doctors know, medicine is not a one-size-fits-all approach, he added.
“[Guidelines] could encourage doctors to practice cookbook medicine, where they’re just going to follow the standard along without being given the opportunity to use their training and clinical experience to see whether that’s actually in the patient’s best interest,” Mr. Stinson said. “We certainly wouldn’t want to see a situation where a doctor feels diverting from a guidelines is in a patient’s best interest, but they don’t dare do it because it could subject them to a lawsuit.”
When enacting malpractice reforms, it will be critical to evaluate the intervention first to ensure the right objections are met, Dr. Jena added.
“At the end of the day, if the [legal] environment is such that it’s uncomfortable to practice medicine, that’s going to have implications for who goes into medicine and implications for ordering tests and procedures,” he said. “Any reform that attempts to make the process more efficient is a good idea because it lowers cost to the system and makes the experience better for patients and physicians.”
This article was updated 2/15/17.
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