Medical Malpractice

It seems that the phrase "medical malpractice" is all over the newspapers and bulletins these days. Some of these suits are, of course, simply and absolutely ridiculous. For instance, some people have sued healthcare professionals because they overdosed on medicine or their medicine did absolutely nothing.

Some of these damages "caused by the healthcare professionals" are actually caused by the patients themselves, and they are only seeking to blame it on their doctor so that they can relieve themselves of the medical bills and responsibility, and gain a bit of extra cash. So what exactly is real malpractice, and how prevalent is it, in reality?

Malpractice statistics can help people find where exactly in the United States health care system that there are problems to be dealt with. A study was done by the American Academy of Adverse Physicians and looked at over five thousand nine hundred medical malpractice claims. They found the following:

68 percent of all the errors were made with outpatients. These seemingly harmless errors so for more than 1200 deaths.

In general, the amount of deaths and severity of errors were committed with outpatients. In hospitals, malpractice users had much experience.

Looking at the 10 most common conditions that have to do with error-related claims, there is no specific condition that accounts for five or more percent of the claims. This shows that malpractice is simply a silly medical mistake that can be totally avoided. It's not because a particular disease is really hard to treat or diagnose.

Error in diagnosis accounted for more than 1/3 of the claims in the study.

An average of around 195,000 deaths each year in hospitals could potentially be due to medical malpractice (and medical errors) and can be prevented, according to a study by Healthgrades in 2000, 2001, and 2002.

According to mortality and economic impact models created by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene Miller and the Institute of Medicine after the examination of 37 million patient records, medical errors should be considered a national epidemic because they account for about 98,000 avoidable deaths a year. However, some researchers question the accuracy of this study, because it did not give specific criteria stating how to determine whether a death was avoidable or not.

In 2001, a JAMA studied showed that only one in 10000 of those patients would have survived had the hospital and physician provided optimal care.

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There are many critics of malpractice litigation. The process has been labeled as expensive, unpredictable, inefficient, and corrupt. And because lawsuits are now so expensive, insurance companies fear them enough to raise insurance rates for malpractice to ridiculously high prices. Thus, doctors lose a lot of money from having to buy malpractice insurance for fear that they will be sued mercilessly by unsatisfied or unsavory patients, and insurance companies usually stand to gain lots of money from this process.

Since 1975, it is said by critics that the expenses of malpractice litigation have increased almost twelve percent annually, and that is much higher than the rate of inflation in the United States.

Most of the money goes into side sources that have helped along the way during litigation, such as lawyers, accountants, and insurance companies. The amount of money sued for and given in these lawsuit settlements has also increased a drastic 40% within the past eight years, from an average of $700,000 in 1999 to $1,000,000 now.

These drastic expenses are causing doctors to go out of business in many states with unfavorable litigation systems, and many doctors are moving to states with more forgiving systems so that they can continue practicing. This causes the balance of doctors to shift from state to state, so doctors in states with stricter malpractice laws are much more expensive, causing a problematic unbalance.

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While it's clear that malpractice is one of the greatest reasons why litigation rates have increased so much, there are other causes of these expenses too. One, of course, is inflation, which occurs yearly; however, since rates and prices for malpractice have increased much faster than inflation, it's evident that there are other reasons.

Nonetheless, the General Accounting Office released a report in 2003 which stated that though there are indeed multiple reasons for litigation and insurance rate increases, medical malpractice claims make up the majority of the costs of insurance companies and primarily drive the insane rate increases.

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Many doctors are pushing for malpractice caps due to the rising rates of malpractice insurance and the increasing amount of money charged in lawsuits. However, there are many opponents to this idea.

Opponents argue that putting a price cap on malpractice lawsuits would effectively attach a specific price tag to physician mistakes, and thus place a price on the value of human life, which, of course, should not be worth a certain amount of money. Since laws do not allow any sort of monetary value to be placed upon a human life, malpractice caps have not, and will most likely never, come into use.

There have been suggestions thrown out about reforming the tort system. Some have proposed specialized medical courts (like district tax courts) that deal specifically with medical malpractice cases. The judges would have medical experience and knowledge and decide precedents so that later cases can be categorized instead of treated as time-consuming distinct cases each time. The problem with this method is that there is no trial by jury; the argument is that democracy must sometimes be sacrificed for efficiency.