Medical errors and patients safety movements

The opinion of the groups that are concerned with the patient rights and safety is that the policy measures undertaken to reform tort claims and revamping the malpractice insurance did not do much towards addressing the nucleus of the malpractice crisis i. e. , the ‘medical errors’. The medical errors are found to be highly prevalent in the market. The recent malpractice had differed from the earlier ones in that in recent times there is growing awareness among the public about the occurrence of medical errors.

‘Crisis’

There has been a growing debate on whether the medical malpractice insurance system has created a crisis situation. Despite the arguments in favor of and against labeling the situation as a crisis there is a consensus that the malpractice insurance has become expensive and less affordable and also the availability is scarce. A crisis in the malpractice insurance system can be defined to include a period of volatility in the professional liability insurance of the physicians in which “deterioration in insurance carriers’ financial ratios is followed by higher than historical increases in insurance premium and/or decreased supply of insurance.