Medical Malpractice in Public Healthcare Systems: An empirical investigation of scheduled damages

Abstract

Professional malpractice has been associated with the medical profession from the moment of its conception. Nevertheless, medical malpractice has asserted itself as one of the most critical issues for healthcare providers and for health policy in the last three decades. In particular, the most famous and documented experience in terms of medical malpractice refers to the U.S., which starting from the end of the 1960s registered a strong but erratic increase in both the frequency of malpractice suits and the average compensation awarded to victims. This process culminated in the mid 1970s when doctors, lawyers and insurance companies started to complain about a real medical malpractice crisis. Such a crisis was mainly due to the sparse availability of medical professional coverage and it has later been followed by two other crises. In the 80s, the American malpractice insurance industry experienced a rapid increase in premium rates that led to problems of affordability of policies for medical liability. In the late 90s and the beginning of 2000, besides high premiums, the sector also suffered from a reduction in the availability of this type of insurance. Yet, in the last decades several other countries have faced and reported similar difficulties as far as medical professional liability insurance is concerned, regardless of the type of healthcare system (i.e. mainly public or mainly private), the type of legal system (i.e. common or civil law), as well as the type of liability regime (i.e. no-fault or liability based on negligence).