re: #225 PT Barnum

I’m thinking it would prevent such problems by creating a single place people could go to get a doctor’s history.

Would enable the market to actually work as opposed to the system we have now, where costs and quality are completely detached.

The longstanding problem there is what to do with claims against a doctor that he or she disputes. The simple rule was to say that if the doctor prevailed, the claim didn’t go into the database, but if he/she settled, it did. But that gives the doctor a powerful incentive to resist everything to the bitter end. (Which is probably a bad thing.) And most doctors have control over whether they settle.

The current trend is to give doctors a no-recourse way of saying they are sorry for a bad outcome, as studies seem to show that there would be significantly less malpractice litigation if the plaintiff had been communicated with in a nice and humble way early on. (Many doctors are lousy communicators.)

So how do you encourage the apology, have transparency about mistakes and encourage claims to settle, all at once? Beats me. If you can figure that out, you are very smart.