The medical tort system does not deter medical errors, compensates a small percentage of patients affected by negligent care, and is driving shortages in specialty care through rapidly rising insurance rates. New approaches, including an administrative system of health courts may address these issues and improve patient safety.
Medical Malpractice
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Physicians' Fears of Malpractice Lawsuits are not Assuaged by Tort Reforms
September 1, 2010 | Journal Article
Physicians contend that the threat of malpractice lawsuits forces them to practice defensive medicine, which in turn raises the cost of health care.
Understanding Medical Malpractice Insurance
January 1, 2006 | Report
As a result of rapidly rising medical malpractice insurance premiums, reduced availability of coverage, and financially distressed liability insurers, many states have passed tort reforms. This synthesis examines the medical malpractice "crisis" and the effect of state tort reforms.
Facilitating and Impeding Factors for Physicians' Error Disclosure
April 1, 2006 | Journal Article
The authors performed a structured literature review to enhance understanding of factors that both impede and enhance disclosure of medical errors. They performed a MEDLINE search of related articles published between 1975 and 2004, which yielded 5, ...
Understanding Diagnostic Errors in Medicine
June 1, 2006 | Journal Article
The authors present a real-life case in which a patient's spinal cord compression was delayed to illustrate how "situational awareness" (SA) can be used to understand diagnostic errors in medicine. SA is defined as "a person's perception of the elem ...
An Empirically Derived Taxonomy of Factors Affecting Physicians' Willingness to Disclose Medical Errors
September 1, 2006 | Journal Article
Physician disclosure of medical errors to institutions, patients and colleagues is important for patient safety, patient care and professional education, yet numerous factors pose impediments to disclosure. The authors of this article saw a need to ...
Beyond the Medical Record
May 1, 2005 | Journal Article
Medical record reports are not always sufficient for quantifying and understanding medical errors. Qualitative inquiries can be used to supplement and confirm large-scale quantitative data analyses. In this study 26 semi-structured interviews were c ...
Reporting Medical Errors to Improve Patient Safety
January 14, 2008 | Journal Article
In this study, the authors examined how physicians and other health care providers view error disclosure, how frequently they report errors, and what the obstacles to their reporting them might be.
The Locality Rule and the Physician's Dilemma
June 20, 2007 | Journal Article
Local Medical Practices vs the National Standard of Care.
What Happens When Physicians and Hospitals Admit Their Mistakes? Find Out in a New Paper
July 15, 2008 | Program Result Report
Eve Shapiro of Eve Shapiro Medical Writing prepared a report describing the experiences of seven "leading edge" medical organizations that have instituted policies and processes for disclosing medical errors.
Physicians' Views on Defensive Medicine
June 28, 2010 | Journal Article
Defensive medicine in the form of unnecessary tests and procedures by physicians costs an estimated $60 billion annually. This study assessed physicians' beliefs to determine to what extent they practice defensive medicine in order to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.