The rising cost of medical malpractice insurance has led to lawmakers and medical professionals coming together to discuss ways to make insurance more affordable for physicians.
For doctors, the cost of defending a medical malpractice lawsuit is
very high - not to mention the time and energy required to investigate
the case. Typically, the claims process is about 5 years from the time
of injury to the time of settlement. This has created concern for
doctors which has led public policy leaders to examine ways to reduce
cost and speed up the claims process.
There have been many
proposals to make medical malpractice more affordable. Here are some of
them:
Focus on risk management - Identify what is
causing the most claims and work to establish standards to improve in
those areas. Doctors can study medical malpractice prevention as part
of their licensing.
Focus on doctors
with multiple liability cases - Doctors who have a history of
malpractice are the ones driving up the cost of medical malpractice
insurance, so the focus should be on taking away their licenses until
they can prove that their worthy of practicing medicine again.
Encourage
doctors to communicate with patients - If something happens that
was unexpected or a mistake was made, doctors should be open and honest
with their patients. This will make the claims process and
investigation go much quicker.
Create courts of
law that specialize in medical malpractice suits - There have been
bills introduced to Congress that would allow these types of courts to
be set up. Litigation will no longer be passed from judge to judge and
there would be greater consistency in decision-making.
If
lawmakers and medical professionals work together and stay focused on
these goals, it will only be a matter of time that medical malpractice
suits will decrease and malpractice insurance rates will become more
affordable.
