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Caps act as a punishment to the most injured people damaged by medical malpractice and fail to
promote safe medical practices. Legislators concerned over
malpractice litigation should shift their focus to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are injured or killed by medical errors yearly in the United States.
Preventable medical errors account for more deaths yearly than auto accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. A 2003 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that in one third of all surgeries doctors and nurses failed to perform an instrument count and that sponges, clamps and other tools were left behind in about 1,500 patients per year.
Despite these alarming statistics, legislators continue to ignore the fact that medical malpractice lawsuits exist as the result of serious medical errors. According to Public Citizen, the National Practitioner Data Bank showed that only 5.4% of doctors are responsible for 56.2% of malpractice payouts and further that 83% of doctors have never made a payout. Given this, it seems that all doctors are paying for the misdeeds of a small percentage of repeat offenders who are permitted to practice medicine despite repeated mistakes that harm their patients.
This is further supported by the fact that only 8% of doctors who have made two (2) or more payouts had been disciplined by their State Medical Board and only 14.4% of those who have made four (4) or more payouts have been disciplined by their State Medical Board. If the small percentage of doctors that are responsible for the majority of malpractice were either disciplined, re-educated or stripped of their licenses, the net result would be safer patients and fewer insurance company payouts. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group found that there were only 2,992 serious disciplinary actions taken by State Medical Boards across the nation in 2003. With recent estimates that 195,000 patients die from preventable medical errors in hospitals every year, it is apparent that State Medical Boards are simply not doing enough. Limiting the amount that can be awarded to a brain damaged baby or the family of someone killed by a doctor’s negligence is not the answer. The real answer is to lower the incidence of malpractice.
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