No-fault compensation for medical injuries - The prospect for error prevention

Abstract

Leading patient safety proposals promote the design and implementation of error prevention strategies that target systems used to deliver care and eschew individual blame. They also call for candor among practitioners about the causes and consequences of medical injury. Both goals collide with fundamental tenets of the medical malpractice system. Thus, the challenge of addressing error in medicine demands a thorough reconsideration of the legal mechanisms currently used to deal with harms in health care. In this article, we describe an alternative to litigation that does not predicate compensation on proof of practitioner fault, suggest how it might be operationalized, and argue that there i..