Recent News
Physicians Say Up to 30% of Treatment Unnecessary
Despite years of emphasis on curbing costly and potentially harmful unnecessary care, physicians believe that overtreatment remains an ongoing problem, according to research from Johns Hopkins University published this week in the journal PLOS ONE. The findings, based...
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...
Brace Yourself for an Ob/Gyn Shortage by 2020
Depending on where you live in the United States, it could already be tough to find an obstetrician/gynecologist—almost half of U.S. counties lack one, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But recent studies show that the problem is only going to get...
Congressman Steve King defends his medical malpractice tort reform bill
Healthcare Matters announced today that its video interview of United States Congressman Steve King — sponsor of the Protecting Access to Care Act of 2017— is available on Cunningham Group's website. The Healthcare Matters interview of Rep. Steve King focused on the...
Tort reforms facing legal challenges in three states
In contrast with the federal government—where a House-passed medical liability reform bill languishes in the Senate—many states have found success enacting tort reforms that better serve patients and physicians. But court cases are challenging reforms in place in at...
Rural America’s Childbirth Crisis: The Fight to Save Whitney Brown
Whitney Brown was in labor with her first baby when suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Convulsions shook her body. Ms. Brown’s blood pressure and oxygen levels dropped, and the baby’s heart rate plunged. Nurses at Saint Thomas River Park Hospital called obstetrician...
This was our government working as it should
The Aug. 2 news article “Lobbyists taking credit for writing bill to overhaul medical malpractice laws” claimed that lobbyists boasted about writing new legislation blindly passed by Congress without review. The bill was a modestly revised version of legislation that...
A doctor’s place is in the exam room
An orthopedic surgeon and a neurosurgeon walk into a room … Unfortunately, this is not the start of a joke. While we would prefer to be sharing best practices and treating patients in our exam rooms, the fact is we’re spending more time than we’d like in a courtroom....
Commentary: Florida Supreme Court crowns itself fact-finder and policymaker on malpractice
On June 8, in North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that caps on noneconomic damages (pain and suffering) in medical malpractice lawsuits violated the equal protection clause. Mostly, the court said that the caps did not pass the...
Medical malpractice tort reform: A remedy for ‘fairness’
While repeal-and-replace health care legislation sputters and stalls in the U.S. Senate, the House has advanced a medical tort-reform bill that could, by one estimate, save taxpayers at least $50 billion over 10 years. The Protecting Access to Care Act passed by a...