Looming malpractice
The average physician can expect to spend nearly 11 percent of his or her career with a malpractice claim waiting to be resolved. Some specialists will spend nearly a third of their careers with open claims, a new analysis has found. The length of time it takes to resolve a malpractice claim is a stress on patients, physicians, and the legal system — and may distress physicians even more than the financial costs of the claim. “We believe that the time required to resolve malpractice claims may be a significant reason that physicians are so vocal about malpractice reform, and that any attempt at malpractice reform will need to take the speed with which cases are resolved into account,” said corresponding author Anupam Jena, assistant professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a general internist at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Using a database from a...