Do Suits Against Hospitals Improve The Quality of Care?
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George J. Annas, Ph.D., one of the country's most respected and prolific writers in the field of medicine and health law, concluded in 2006 that "hospitals can decide on their own [whether] to take patients' rights to safety seriously." Annas wrote that only a few hospitals have in fact taken on this responsibility. Rather than calling injured patients enemies, he argued that hospitals should see themselves as natural allies in solving the patient safety problem.
My Impression:
Lawsuits do result in positive changes in the medical profession, not only by showing the individual doctor that he has made an error, but often by changing the actual standards of medical practice. For example, anesthesiologists decided that because of the large number of liability suits that they were facing they would make a concentrated effort at reducing the number of anesthesia mistakes. They did so and the risk of death from anesthesia dropped. As a consequence, malpractice premiums dropped appreciably.
You can find Dr. Annas' article in the May 11, 2006 New England Journal of Medicine.
September 14, 2007
