Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Most lawsuits against doctors are over bad outcomes, not malpractice

From South Carolina:

Many physicians acknowledge that their profession has not done enough to reduce medical errors. They argue, correctly, that lawsuits are not the best way to solve the problem: Most lawsuits against doctors are over bad outcomes, not malpractice; and most cases of actual malpractice don’t result in lawsuits, or in any other punitive action. But simply supporting new procedures aimed at systemic errors or wishing the lawsuits would go away isn’t a sufficient answer to the problem. As long as the state operates a self-policing system for physicians, its primary goal should be to discipline that tiny minority of doctors whose carelessness or incompetence truly poses a risk to patients.
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