The Commercial Appeal wrote an interesting story on medical malpractice litigation in today’s paper. Read it here.
An excerpt:
Nationwide, the number of payments physicians made for malpractice claims fell to 11,037 last year — the lowest figure since the National Practitioner Data Bank began tracking data in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, the total $3.6 billion they paid was the second-lowest sum on record.
The Washington Supreme Court has struck down the filing of a certificate of merit in medical malpractice cases in Washington state. The certificate is required by RCW 7.70.150.
The opinion said that the statute was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers between the Legislature and the Judiciary and it denied medical malpractice victims equal access to the courts.
The Court said that
A reader sent me an article in September – October 2009 issue of Harvard Magazine that discusses the work of Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande is very interested in patient safety. One of his interests is the use of medical checklists, a subject I have addressed in a previous post.
Apparently, Gawande and his colleagues developed a checklist for surgery patients. The list, described in the article as addressing "rudimentary tasks" (e.g. confirming the patient’s identity), had some amazing results. In one year of use in 8 different hospitals around the world, the rate of complications had dropped one-third; surgicial-site infections by half, and deaths of surgical patients by nearly half.
Seven countries and more than two dozen states require the use of surgical checklists. One wonders why every state in the Union does not require them.
Day on Torts