If you could go to college to learn how to avoid medical malpractice lawsuits, would you?
A new university will offer clinical and non-clinical risk management courses, and teach doctors how to avoid medical malpractice lawsuits. These are not just any old courses. They are put together and written by the school of medicine faculty at Harvard, Stanford and other very prominent universities.
While this new university is being launched in Florida, there may be potential for this innovative approach to be implemented in other jurisdictions and states. The MedMal Direct Insurance Company of Jacksonville, Florida launched the college in September and calls it the MedMal Direct University. This unique concept to reduce the cost of medical malpractice will utilize many practices to prevent medical malpractice. This could end up being a better tactic than tort reform, which is a whole other issue.
Every course this new university offers 2.0 AMA PRA Category 1TM credit hours and a doctor can take the courses online at any time of the day or night. All doctors need is a computer and the desire to learn more about managing the risk of medical malpractice in their careers. This is a great idea and it will likely benefit other insurance companies and states to see how it works at www.MedMalDirectUniversity.org.
Will this be a good tool for medical malpractice lawyers? No doubt it will and perhaps there is room for expansion further down the road. The fact is that medical malpractice is rampant in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the system is overloaded with sick people and there are not enough doctors to keep up with the demand. It is thus not a big surprise why the price of medical care increases every year.
Doctors are human and they all have a breaking point. Dealing with sick and injured people all day, every day, including weekends (on call) and holidays takes its toll. If there was a way to reduce the likelihood of medical malpractice happening, it would be a welcome break for not only the medical community at large but patients as well. By educating themselves about the risks of medical malpractice, how to manage those risks and reduce or eliminate them, a doctor’s accuracy rate can improve. Thus, the risk of being sued for medical negligence decreases.
The online MedMal Direct University aims to identify and then eliminate the causes of medical malpractice as an error starts to happen. In other words, it will work to decrease the frequency and severity of medical malpractice lawsuits. In turn, this will reduce the emotional and financial costs that medical malpractice creates when a patient feels they have been a victim of medical negligence.
It is no secret that all over the U.S., there are continual calls for reducing the costs of health care delivery. Part of that would be reducing the number of medical malpractice lawsuits filed. The more doctors educate themselves about how to avoid a medical malpractice lawsuit, the more patients benefit. The more patients that benefit from wise medical choices and management, the fewer lawsuits are filed.
Solutions like this make far more sense than medical malpractice caps that victimize injured patients twice, and leave them financially unable to care for themselves because the jury award was cut. It would also improve physician accountability and case management.
Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.
