Medical Malpractice - Legal Perspective of Increasing Hospital's Costs - Research Paper Example

Medical Malpractice: Legal Perspective of Increasing Costs and Insurance Premiums The health care system in the United States can nearly carry out miracles. It entails a certain extent of risk of harm to patients yet frequently, the risk is insignificant. Most negative outcomes can be remedied with further medical expenditures and a considerable amount of time spent away from work. A handful of procedures, though, could cause harmful outcomes with substantial damages to patients. Even if a patient pulled through a debilitating disease, a great deal of side effects could linger on. In spite lengthy and rigorous education and residency, there are important disparities in proficiencies and competencies showed by physicians; some of them perform better than others. In turn, treatments can result into a number of outcomes. A patient confronted with an unfavorable outcome can be given with some alternatives to pay for the damages and losses incurred. If a physician is freed from accountability for a harmful outcome, in that case the involved patient could either self-insure or purchase a commercial insurance to cover him or her for expenditures of undesirable outcomes. A further option is to hold the provider accountable for expenditures of unfavorable outcomes. Another option is to hold the provider accountable for expenditures of an unfavorable outcome if it can be proven that the provided indeed is responsible for the negative outcome. Another alternative could be to permit the provider and the patient to draft an agreement or contract to allocate costs of unfavorable outcomes. Apparently, these options can influence the expenses of delivery depending on who accepts the accountability for the cost of negative outcomes (Hogan 2003). Compensating for the damages of medical malpractice entails a sequence of procedures in court. To start with, the lawyer for the offended individual should establish the norm of health care for which a provider is held accountable. This is accomplished through a knowledgeable and experienced witness. The lawyer for the offended should as well establish that the harm causing the injury or loss was the outcome of the failure of the provider to conform to the norms of health care; if the offended can establish that the malpractice and negligence of the provided resulted in the damage and loss, then the offended is given the right to recover damages (Fielding 1999). The manner a judge or a jury will make a decision regarding the case is difficult to forecast and this indecision causes providers, offended, and insurers to resolve the case outside the jurisdiction of the court. In an attempt to lessen costs of medical malpractice, reformers in the previous decades of the twentieth century have concentrated on cutting back contingency charges; fee settlements wherein the lawyer stand for the client for an agreed-upon percentage of the sum recovered. The most general recommendation to lessen costs of medical malpractice has usually been to put a limit on damages that are noneconomic. Since the recent years, though, critics and insurance companies have disputed the usefulness of such restrictions in mitigating medical malpractice insurance premiums, triggering the transition to contingency charge modification attempts (Hogan 2003). Advocates of such development claim that the contingency charge system generates enticements for lawyers to assume upon multitudes of non-meritorious cases that possess very little possibility of success, in anticipation that the bonus from a handful of winning cases will surpass the cost of the others; even though the proceedings are unsuccessful, though, insurance companies should still use up resources to shield and defend them and could even resolve non-meritorious cases for fear of unfavorable jury decisions. Advocates as well maintain that claimants, not lawyers, merit the largest portion of any damage incentives. Critics of contingency charge modification, nonetheless, emphasize that contingency charge settlements facilitate admittance to the courtroom for claimants who would otherwise be incapable to risk shelling out fixed hourly rates with the likelihood of no monetary compensation (Bhat 2001). Hence, strategies to limit contingency changes may harm the poor’s capability to file personal damage complaints. In an effort to reduce surplus contingency charges and in so doing lessen medical malpractice lawsuit costs, the federal government has continuously suggested inclusive national medical malpractice amendment bills that involve restrictions on contingency charges. Even though the malpractice amendment bills have been approved in the House of Representative in the recent years, they have been unsuccessful in making it out in the Senate. Contingency charges amendment has been more thriving at the state level with several states ratifying decrees, court decisions, or even ratifying constitutional reforms to restrict the fraction of medical malpractice incentives that lawyers could amass. These decrees have been recurrently criticized in state courtrooms as a breach of “due process, the right to counsel, separation of powers, and most often equal protection” (Bhat 2001, 33). The criticisms and attacks have had varied outcomes, with most states preserving the decrees as legitimate and two states repealing their laws as illegitimate. The primary dissimilarity between the two parties is that courts preserving the contingency charge restricting decree under one and the same defense claims have discovered that such decrees are successful strategies to mitigate costs of medical malpractice, while those courts repealing the decrees have discovered the decrees unsuccessful at decreasing costs. Interestingly, even though effectiveness seems to decide whether a state decree passes constitutional assessment and even though legal rulings in these states have professed to verify whether amendment procedures are effective, none of the courts have provided significant evidence-based substantiation for their findings (Hogan 2003). The problem is obvious. Insurance rates of medical malpractice are increasing at unprecedented rates across the nation. Physicians confronting astronomically rising premiums are being coerced to prevent carrying out high-risk medical procedures or to claim an early retirement. A number of states are good shape, yet it seems that none are protected from the possible fatal implications of pricing physicians and patients out of the marketplace of healthcare. Unluckily, the answer is not almost as definite as the problem. Contingency charge restrictions could even out insurance premiums of medical malpractice, but incapable to mitigate premiums in states that are previously confronting an acute crisis. Even the well publicized limitation on damages that are noneconomic does not seem to resolve the dilemma without being complemented with other amendments. The twenty-first century situated medical malpractice amendment in the center of attention, making it vital to examine the effectiveness and efficacy of the suggested amendments. Provided with the enormity of the predicament the healthcare system cannot meet the expense of useless or stop restriction amendment measures. References Bhat, Vasanthakumar N. Medical Malpractice: A Comprehensive Analysis. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 2001. Fielding, Stephen L. The Practice of Uncertainty: Voices of Physicians and Patients in Medical Malpractice Claims. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1999. Hogan, Neal C. Unhealed Wounds: Medical Malpractice in the Twentieth Century. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003. Read More