An end to skyrocketing healthcare costs cannot occur without restoring reliability to the justice system through the creation of specialized healthcare courts, says a report from the not-for-profit group Common Good, titled “Windows of Opportunity: State-Based Ideas for Improving Medical Injury Compensation and Enhancing Patient Safety.” The report draws on several years of research by professors from Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and many other medico-legal scholars.
The proposed healthcare courts would have specially trained administrative judges who would be advised by neutral experts and would “make decisions and write opinions on standards of care,” says Philip K. Howard, founder and chairman of Common Good, writing in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Such courts would provide a standardized way of addressing malpractice claims, provide compensation to patients if the injury was avoidable, and, most importantly, would enhance patient safety.
Injured patients would receive compensation for all their medical bills, as well as lost income, and compensation for pain and suffering would be determined by a preset schedule dependent on the type of injury. Healthcare providers should not “go through the day looking over their shoulders instead of doing what they think is right,” Howard says. “The only way to overcome this distrust, and all its debilitating errors and waste, is to create a special health court that is trustworthy.”
Use States as Laboratories to Test New Systems
At both the Federal and State levels, says the report, there is a policy logjam over medical liability reform. While some evidence suggests that the crisis in malpractice insurance premiums may be abating, future crises are not ruled out. Reforms such as health courts or administrative compensation programs that address system failings relating to patient compensation and inefficiency, as well as secondary impacts of the medical liability system on health quality and coverage should be carried out at the State level, where States could be used as “laboratories” for testing such new ideas, the report says.
“Creating health court or administrative compensation demonstration projects now could serve as a major catalyst leading to major breakthroughs across the country — since ideas that are successfully adopted in one state can spread to others. Doing so could also send a strong message to Congress, increasing the likelihood of federal action,” the report states. “Moreover, these reforms have substantial potential to promote the creation of healthcare environments where professionals can learn from their mistakes — and take steps to prevent such mistakes from re-occurring in the future.”
Most importantly, by showcasing new injury dispute mechanisms that better compensate patients, reduce administrative costs, and promote a culture of patient safety, these demonstration projects can also provide substantial benefits to the healthcare system as a whole, the report concludes.
SOURCE: Common Good, (http://cgood.org/assets/attachments/Windows_of_opportunity_web.pdf)
