Lawsuits only make malpractice worse

Robert Kessler, Boulder City

Sunday, April 5, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

An article in Tuesday’s Las Vegas Sun quoted several trial lawyers who said tort reform was responsible for the hepatitis tragedy. Only a lawyer could say this without blushing.

All independent studies show that lawsuits actually make patients less safe. For instance, the Institute of Medicine found that systems that depend on punishment (like lawsuits) to remedy errors discourage self-reporting of them. Without understanding why errors happen, we can’t prevent them.

The Federal Aviation Administration has taken a different path. If a pilot drifts over a restricted area, they can notify NASA (which collects the data) of the error and its cause. Doing this assures there won’t be punishment. That’s why pilots self-report errors and why the FAA has been able to increase safety.

So, while lawsuits make safety worse, systems that focus on solutions make it better. It’s possible to fix blame or fix the system, but not both.

Lawsuits compensate for injuries, but they’re a poor way to punish bad behavior, such as that which caused the hepatitis outbreak. For that we have several layers of administrative and legal remedies. I agree that these have been frustratingly slow, but then the average malpractice lawsuit takes four years to work its way through the courts.

No system is perfect but the answer isn’t repealing tort reform, which has increased physician numbers and patient access to care, sextupled the number of insurers, and saved Nevadans millions of dollars in just five years.

Rather, we should follow the FAA’s example and establish an effective system of error reporting and analysis so we can decrease the number of errors that occur. At the same time, we can make the administrative and legal remedies for bad behavior more efficient.

Could the lawyers’ motivation really be that they receive less money under tort reform?

The writer is president-elect of the Nevada Osteopathic Medical Association.