Purpose: Medical errors account for many inefficiencies in our fractured healthcare system. According to numerous studies, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States and contribute to billions of dollars in deadweight loss in healthcare expenditures. To address this astonishing fact, this brief is intended to showcase the economic burdens of medical errors and attempts to provide a sustainable policy solution. This brief will prepare me for further analysis of how medical errors translate into economic burdens on the U.S. economy. This post demonstrates my strength in analyzing economic inefficiencies within a particular fragment of the healthcare system, as well as my ability to propose and support a policy provision designed to reduce the prevalence of medical errors and subsequently decrease the associated deadweight loss.
Redesigning laws that define medical errors would be one of the pivotal components to overhaul our exhaustive healthcare system. Since the inception of our modern health system, medical facilities, hospitals, and clinics have encountered perpetual legal disputes regarding the operational efficiency and destitute quality of care of patients. In 2008, medical errors accounted for approximately $19.5 billion of healthcare expenditures, and the prospective economic impact for the upcoming year would total to $1 trillion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, and Moreno, p. 39). This upward trend in medical discrepancies and their financial implications have led to a new wave of reforms. This brief essay will argue that there should be a statute that encourages the harmed patient and accused doctor to settle the issue before it enters the judicial system.
It would be imperative to implement legislation that would reassure the concerns of the patient and safeguard the physicians. This would be known as the Medical Reassurance and Security Act. This approach would prevent expensive financial expenditures, while also considering the perspectives of the offended and accused parties. Medical errors are a result of displeased, harmed, or injured patients. In most cases, these individuals are in lower socio-economic conditions, and they are battling physicians with greater social capital and financial backing from their employers, such as hospitals and medical/health organizations. Opposing sides of the argument face emotional, financial, and social stress as a result of these claims, and having a law implemented to delay the issue from producing negative implications.
Medical errors are inevitable outcomes of medical procedures; therefore, it would be essential to enact a policy that would prepare for unavoidable errors that would occur during healthcare delivery regardless of the amount of precautions implemented. This piece of legislation would make it easier when there has been an unintended medical outcome, when there has been alleged malpractice or even proven malpractice. Similarly to Iowa, it is an enactment that would be voluntary on both sides and would not reduce anyone’s ability to file a lawsuit if that is the route they decided to choose. This would provide an alternative mechanism so that if all the parties involved wanted to, they could freely meet to discuss the issue without going through the court litigation process. As a result, medical error expenditures would decrease by millions upon millions of dollars, and healthcare delivery outcomes would be controlled.
Bibliography
Andel, C., Davidow, S., Hollander, M., & Moreno, D. (2012). The economics of health care quality and medical errors. Retrieved May 01, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23155743
