Tenured academics are not known for their firm grasp of reality. Medical malpractice policy seems to be an exception. In the thirty years that have passed since California adopted its paradigmatic malpractice reform legislation, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA),1 the health care system has changed dramatically. Annual spending on health care in the United States has ri...

We begin with Galanter’s suggestion that attorneys who are “repeat players” in a specific area of litigation have an advantage over those who are not. Using a combination of data sources we analyze the impact of attorney experience and case characteristics on case outcome of 348 North Carolina medical malpractice lawsuits. We add the insurers’ evaluation of liability to the analysis in a limite...

Forensic experts should be aware of the increasing importance of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in various legal settings. CPGs are a type of learned treatise and are accepted into court proceedings under hearsay exception provisions. The courts now use CPGs as shorthand for the standard of care in making malpractice determinations. However, medical guidelines can function as a sword or a ...

BACKGROUND Malpractice issues within the United States remain a critical factor for family physicians providing obstetric care. Although tort reform is being widely discussed, little has been written regarding the malpractice crisis from a risk management perspective. METHODS Between 1989 and 1998, a 10-year risk management study at the UC Davis Health System provided a unique collaboration b...

In 1974 New Zealand jettisoned a tort-based system for compensating medical injuries in favor of a government-funded compensation system. Although the system retained some residual fault elements, it essentially barred medical malpractice litigation. Reforms in 2005 expanded eligibility for compensation to all "treatment injuries," creating a true no-fault compensation system. Compared with a m...

BACKGROUND Little information exists on U.S. physicians who have been disciplined with licensure or restriction-of-clinical-privileges actions or have had malpractice payments because of sexual misconduct. Our objectives were to: (1) determine the number of these physicians and compare their age groups' distribution with that of the general U.S. physician population; (2) compare the type of dis...

to successfully defend a single claim of malpractice would likely exceed the annual premium for liability insurance, and this fact alone makes malpractice insurance a sound business expense. Unfortunately, it’s one that growing numbers of physicians can’t afford. Physicians and patients in 20 states are facing a “full-blown medical liability crisis” (up from 12 states two years ago), and at lea...