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Professional Liability and the Quality of Mental Health Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Richard J. Bonnie
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Extract

Any lawyer in a gathering of health professionals, especially physicians, can expect to be bombarded by complaints about the law of professional liability and the high cost of malpractice insurance. It is well-established, of course, that the number of medical malpractice claims significantly increased in the 1960s, precipitating the first insurance crisis in the early 1970s, and leading to a wave of legislative reforms. Now, after a quiescent period, the number of claims filed and the cost of insurance are rising again, and the legislatures have responded with a new wave of reforms.

According to the American Medical Association's socio-economic monitoring system, the number of claims filed against physicians increased from an average annual rate of 3.2 per 100 physicians before 1981 to 8.2 from 1981-1984 and to 10.1 in 1985. The annual cost of insurance premiums, which had increased only by 4 percent per year from 1976 to 1982, increased by an annual average of 21.9 percent between 1983 and 1985. The cost of insurance represents about 4 percent of the gross revenues of the average self-employed physician.

Type
Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, and Law
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 3-4 , Winter 1988 , pp. 229 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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