The most frequently echoed myth concerning medical negligence is the notion that doctors are fleeing states and retiring early, creating physician shortages. Anecdotal accounts of doctors fleeing states in response to increased insurance premiums have proved to be either unrepresentative isolated events, or flat out false.
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The civil justice system is necessary because other disciplinary mechanisms are woefully inadequate. State medical boards, for instance, are supposed to discipline doctors who consistently violate standards of care. Yet less than nine percent of doctors who make multiple malpractice payments are ever subject to medical board discipline. Two-thirds of doctors who make 10 or more malpractice payments are never disciplined at all
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As part of its ongoing effort to pay for better care, not just more services and higher costs, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced that it is investigating ways that Medicare can help to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of “never events” – serious and costly errors in the provision of health care services that should never happen. “Never events,” like surgery on the wrong body part or mismatched blood transfusion, cause serious injury or death to beneficiaries, and result in increased costs to the Medicare program to treat the consequences of the error.
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