Does Improved Patient Safety Reduce Malpractice Litigation?
This research brief examines the relation-ship between safety outcomes in hospitals and malpractice claiming against physicians. Focusing on county-level data from California, a large state where caps on damages and other aspects of tort law have been stable for decades, researchers found that patient safety outcomes were strongly correlated with the number of medical malpractice claims, within individual counties and over a number of years from 2001 through 2005. The implication for policy is that greater focus on improving safety performance could benefit both patients and medical providers.
