MEDICAL MALPRACTICE In the News
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The Boston Globe reports on New Hampshire’s medical malpractice panels, which screen cases prior to trial and issue recommendations for resolution. The panels were created to address the high cost of medical malpractice insurance for physicians, by limiting the costs involved in opposing plaintiff’s lawsuits. Ideally, the panels are supposed to encourage early resolution, via settlement, of malpractice claims. However, New Hampshire’s Chief Justice, Robert Lynn, says “that’s just not happening.”
Feelings about the panels among lawyers are mixed, to say the least. One reason is that if the panel issues a unanimous ruling, it is provided to the jury if the case goes to trial.
In today’s NY Times, we are reminded that the lack of a nationwide agency that actually regulates hospitals in a way that makes them accountable for their failures often results in disastrous results for patients, in the form of medical malpractice.
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throckmorton said:
This argument points out the main problem with these panels. They are not allowed to do what they were created for. The purpose of these panels was to investigate the case from the medical side and to determine the standard of care and then to see if it were violated or at least in question. This allowed an opinion of the validity of the case and would discourage “frivolous cases”. The problem, as the article points out is that plaintiff’s attorneys are spending an extreme amount of time preparing for these panels which comes out of their pocket.
Attorneys dislike the panels because they have to spend effort and money to prove that they have a case before the opportunity to seek a settlement based on the “sheer nuisanse factor”.
I would like to see formal review boards that look over the cases to determine what the standard of care is. Further to have this based on evidence based medicine. That way, there would be no expert witnessess. The board would be the experts. Attorneys could then argue about the law as it should be.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:51 pm