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Designated Compensable Events: A No-Fault Approach to Medical Malpractice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Laurence R. Tancredi
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Extract

It has been seven years since the last major medical malpractice crisis, when the cost of liability insurance rose so astronomically that several important insurers withdrew from providing insurance coverage to physicians and health care institutions. Government and private policy groups at that time established committees to evaluate the medical malpractice crisis and to recommend changes that would bring about an amelioration of the adverse financial and health care features surrounding medical malpractice. The United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare published its Report of the Secretary's Commission on Medical Malpractice in 1973, documenting the extent of the crisis and recommending that alterations be made in the existing tort law to alleviate some of the financial burdens brought on by the increasing number of cases. In 1977, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences formed a Steering Committee on Medical injury Compensation that reviewed some of the special problems of the medical malpractice system and published its report.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 10 , Issue 6 , October 1982 , pp. 200 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

References

Furrow, B., Iatrogenesis and Medical Error: The Case for Medical Malpractice Litigation. Law, Medicine & Health Care 9(5): 4 (October 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Havighurst, C.C. Tancredi, L.R., “Medical Adversity Insurance” — A No-Fault Approach to Medical Malpractice and Quality Assurance, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 51:125 (1973), reprinted in Insurance Law Journal 69:613 (1974).Google ScholarPubMed

References

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Some of these outcomes from surgery are: Foreign body unintentionally left in operation site; death during surgical operation other than with a bad-risk patient; puncture or laceration wounds of viscera or blood vessels requiring reparative operations; complete paralysis following anesthesia; and complication of common duct injury (immediate, early, and delayed).Google Scholar
Some of these final adverse medical outcomes from orthopedic surgery are: Nerve injury following orthopedic procedure; postoperative infections, particularly if they involve a clean, uncontaminated surface; malunion of fracture with functional impairment; compartment syndromes in the lower extremities; and Volkmann's ischemic contracture following orthopedic procedure.Google Scholar
See Feasibility Study, supra note 14 (articulation of concept).Google Scholar
ABA Study, supra note 11, at 5.Google Scholar
Id. at 21.Google Scholar
See, e.g., IOM Report, supra note 3, at 40.Google Scholar
See, e.g., No-Fault Approach, supra note 6, at 89.Google Scholar