Health Law and Risk Management †Tort Reform Essays

Health Law and Risk Management – Tort Reform Essays Health Law and Risk Management – Tort Reform Paper Health Law and Risk Management – Tort Reform Paper Errors are failures of planned actions to be completed as intended, or the use of wrong plans to achieve what is intended; adverse events are injuries caused by medical interventions, as opposed to the health care condition of the patient (qtd. in Wecht 239). As quoted by Wecht, when the adverse event is caused by an error it is referred as preventable event. In the context of medical and nursing care, human error has serious consequences; the well publicized IOM study found that errors result in death for almost 100,000 Americans per year; startling recent data reported by Reuters indicate that many more, as many as 195,000 people a year, could be dying from easily prevented medical errors (Wecht 239). As Wecht quoted, the result of the Harvard Medical Malpractice Study suggest that, of approximately one million injuries caused by health care treatment every year, roughly two thirds are due to error; although the Harvard study attempted top ascertain the incidence of error from a review of medical records only, more recent ethnographic studies of actual events of error in health care provision show that error incidence is much higher. According to Wecht, it is in this complex milieu of preventable adverse events that medical cases arise and are defended. The publicity of the failings of medical and nursing care may be one reason for the increase in medical malpractice litigation over the years. It was reported that a number of claims is increasing at 3% a year with a severity, increasing 6.5% per year; hospital liability claim cost for 2004 are reported to be almost $150,000 per claim, compared with $79,000 per claim in 1996; claim cost against a physician is reported to be $178,000, compared with $120,000 in 1996 (qtd, in Wecht 240). Evolution of Malpractice Litigation Despite several burst of malpractice litigation in the 1800s suing physician was an arduous undertaking until the later half of the 20th century (qtd. in Anderson 230). According to Anderson, at this time the judiciary began dismantling barriers that plaintiffs faced in bringing tort litigation; this shift occurred in many areas of accident of accident law, but it was particularly prominent in medical malpractice in the 1960s and early 1970s. Judges discarded rules that had traditionally posed obstacles to litigation; for example, most jurisdictions rolled back charitable immunity for hospitals; court also moved toward national standards of care and abandoned strict interpretations of the locality rule, which had required plaintiffs to find expert witnesses within defendants immediate practice community (qtd. in Anderson 230). According to Anderson, the synergistic impact of changes in legal doctrine, advance s in medical science, and the development of more coherent and visible standards of acre eventually began to show in surges of litigation and plaintiff victories. As claims and insurance premiums soared, major insurances excited the medical malpractice market leaving many physicians without coverage (Anderson 230). The 1990s saw little growth in claims rates and steady but generally manageable increases in average settlement amounts. Medical Malpractice and the New politics of Health Care In each year of the current malpractice crisis – as well as many of those preceding- damage caps and other first generation reforms have been introduced in Congress, with high-profile support from other national officials; yet these proposals die in both the 107th and 108th Congresses, the same faith met by every major malpractices bill introduced over the past introduced over the past 18 years (Sage 59). Familiar stakeholders populate malpractice policy debates from the 1960s forward. According to Sage, the principal combatants, the AMA and ATLA, along with less publicly visible but deeply engaged insurance groups like the AIA or the American Insurance Association and more recently, AHIP or the Association of Health Insurance Professionals, dominated malpractice lobbying activity in the 1990s, in terms of news and coverage and reputed influence; in part of this was due to spending: AMA and ATLA political action committees (PACs) have long been major sources of campaign funds and were both among the top five donors to   federal candidates in 2002 and 2003. Determining the extent of AMA, ATLA, or any other group’s power to influence legislative outcomes is extremely difficult, given the manifold factors involved in any policy battle (Sage 59). A similar interest group effect is often cited for Congress’ failure to pass any malpractice legislation, particularly damage caps. The best empirical study to date of Congressional malpractice legislation, focusing on the House â€Å"Health Act† (a package of first-generation reforms, centered around a $250,000 noneconomic damages cap) in 2003, drew 3 intriguing conclusions: first, financial   contributions had only a limited effect on legislators’ votes on the Health Act – and the influence of insurance/AMA contribution was roughly similar to that of ATLA; second, the AMA’s designation of ‘crisis states’ had no measurable effect on voting – in other words. House members from the nineteen states the AMA designated in 2003 as facing a malpractice crisis were no more likely to vote for damage caps than were members from other states; and third, a significant determinant of voting was whether a House member had a law degree ; lawyers were more inclined to vote against the bill, regardless of party affiliation (Sage 60).