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Administrative "Health Courts" for Medical Injury Claims
The Federal Constitutional Issues
Published: August 2008
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A bill in introduced into Congress in 2005 and advocated by Common Good, a nonprofit organization, and professors Michelle Mello and David Studdert from the Harvard School of Public Health, aims to instigate pilot programs for health courts. The new system will use specialized administrative tribunals with expert judges and neutral expert witnesses in lieu of judges and juries to award compensation in medical injury claims. This article focuses specifically on the federal constitutional issues raised by proposals to replace a traditional system of common law trials before state judges and juries with a federal system of administrative health courts. In reviewing past case law, including United States v. Lopez in which the Supreme Court made it clear that to be subject to federal regulation an activity must substantially affect interstate commerce, the authors determine two bases on which health courts might be upheld by the Supreme Court:
1. If they involve public rights.
2. If the federal government is creating a new federal cause of action that is substantively
different from state medical malpractice law.
The article concludes that a federal compensation system through health courts should be constitutional and that pilot programs should survive an equal protection challenge.
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Publication date:
Feb 20, 2007
Summary:
Common Good, the national nonpartisan legal reform coalition, has been awarded a two-year grant of nearly $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to promote the creation of special health courts to handle medical injury disputes in six states. The...
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This article provides an overview of state-level initiatives to improve patient safety that rely on voluntary reporting of medical errors, and discusses the status of a new federal law encouraging development of voluntary reporting initiatives. The article also...
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Publication date:
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Summary:
The shortcomings of the medical tort system are widely acknowledged and have prompted substantial interest in medical liability reform. This Research Highlight covers an article describing a model for an alternative administrative compensation system featuring...
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The many drawbacks of the medical tort system are stimulating interest in health courts as a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to the current medical malpractice claims system
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