Despite what you read in the paper, lawyers don’t cause medical malpractice. Doctors and hospitals cause malpractice. Stop malpractice and you not only help patients but you get lawyers out of the picture.
Here is a profile of a company that is trying to actually do something to stop errors from injuring or killing patients. This company is trying to change “the ‘John Wayne’ style of hospital management, [where] surgeons run the operating room [and e]verybody else has the good sense to keep quiet.”
The Company reports that “the results are pretty dramatic. One of our biggest clients was running a wrong surgery once every 60 days.” After adopting the program, the error rate is now one every 619 days, 10 times better than the national average, which is 15 wrongs per 100,000 procedures.
That’s right. If doctors and hospitals would spend their money to reduce errors rather than trying to pass legislation that restricts the rights of patients with legitimate claims they would improve their relationship with patients.