Michelle Mello and colleagues examined reports in a federal health database to determine whether there were observable relationships between the intensity of litigation environments on a state level and measures of hospital outcomes. “No consistent association between malpractice environment and hospital process-of-care measures was found. … Overall, little evidence was found that greater malpractice risk improves adherence to recommended clinical standards of care, but some evidence was found that malpractice risk may encourage defensive medicine.” [Tim Allen, M.D. J.D.]
2 Comments
Medical professional liability insurance companies play a role in reducing practice risk. Insurance companies actively oversee physicians because they are liable. With malpractice caps, liability is reduced and this patient protection would be reduced as well. See this Cato Policy Analysis: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa685.pdf. For a shorter outline of the main ideas, see: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/mandatory-medical-malpractice-caps-hurt-patients.
Others at Cato who have spent many years studying the medical liability system dissent from some of the claims made in those two papers. However, in my opinion, this is neither the time nor the place to air policy disagreements to be found under the broad Cato umbrella, so I’ll stop there.