Caps on Medical Malpractice Awards

Paper Summary:

This is a nursing proposal suggesting what nurses can do to reduce risk while strongly advocating caps on malpractice awards. The current legislature on malpractice caps and the level of reduced care to patients is discussed. The patients' own inability to afford service, the affordability to practice by physicians and their need to increase patients' costs for services by ordering many more than medically necessary are all covered.

From the Paper:

"There is a vicious cycle taking place in the world of healthcare that involves patients, attorneys, physicians and healthcare professionals and facilities and insurance companies. Medical malpractice premium rates are forcing doctors and nurse practitioners to order medically unnecessary tests and pad bills or fold their practices. According to the Center for Legal Policy (as cited by Stableford, 2005) "unnecessary medical tests and constant referrals to specialists for second and third opinions costs an unnecessary $60 billion to $100 billion." Law suits continue to climb at an alarming rate with unconscionable awards that are not consistent with something that can be measured tangibly. Attorneys play on the sympathy of juries for neurological deformities of infants that could have naturally occurred genetically, not necessarily as a result of medical error, yet huge awards for punitive damages are awarded."

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