Recent Massachusetts News
‘Sorry’ doesn’t mean they’ll sue: How hospitals avoided lawsuits after adverse events
Communication-and-resolution programs (CRP) at four Massachusetts hospitals led to lower medical liability costs and improvements in patient safety after adverse events, countering concerns that telling patients about errors would motivate more to file lawsuits. Led...
September 2017 Newsletter
Liability concerns drive up defensive medicine, cost of care Providing treatment above what is medically necessary to fend off the threat of a lawsuit continues to be a trend – and a major driver of health care cost increases. A study of over 2100 physicians conducted...
Advances in Patient Safety and Medical Liability
Research in patient safety and medical liability in recent years has widened our definition of these terms. Patient Safety improvement is no longer a preventive strategy to protect medical facilities from lawsuits—it is a serious and wide-reaching effort to measurably...
Current Medical Liability Laws
| Damage Caps | $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages, with exceptions for proof of substantial disfigurement or permanent loss or impairment of a bodily function, or other special circumstances which warrant a finding that imposition of such limitation would deprive the plaintiff of just compensation for the injuries sustained. |
| Joint Liability Reform | No. Each defendant is jointly and severally liable. |
| Collateral Source Reform | Collateral Source Rule applies in tort cases. See Law v. Griffith, 930 N.E.2d 126 (Mass. 2010). But in cases of medical malpractice benefits from collateral sources must be disclosed and used to reduce recoverable economic damages, minus any amount paid by the claimant to secure the benefit. |
| Attorney Fees Limited | Yes. Fees are limited to 40% of the first $150,000; 33 1/3% of the next $150,000 and 30% of the next $200,000; and 25% of amounts exceeding $500,000. An attorney may not take an amount that would leave the claimant with less than the amount of unpaid past and future medical expenses, with exceptions. |
| Periodic Payments Permitted | No |