Cause for concern

Heal emergency-care system

Monday, February 3, 2014

The state of Arkansas’ emergency-room care environment was the topic of a recent article that included a call for caps on non-economic damages in medical-malpractice cases. And while some of the conclusions reached may be valid, this demands a closer examination of the crisis at hand.

The article cited a study released by the American College of Emergency Physicians that gave Arkansas an F in access to emergency care, and a D for quality and patient safety environment.

Both are cause for concern.

However, the article went on to partially attribute the failing grades to the lack of a one-size-fits-all cap on non-economic damages sought by injured patients.

As the article states, it’s true that we have a serious problem facing our healthcare system. Accounting for between 210,000 and 440,000 million deaths per year, preventable medical errors are now the third leading cause of death for Americans, just behind cancer and heart disease. This is obviously of grave concern. However, blaming lawsuits for this crisis is misguided. Instead, our focus should always be on eradicating preventable medical errors, not shielding a broken system from responsibility.

Having raised a family of my own, I know all too well the importance of trusting an emergency room to handle the needs of a sick or severely injured child. Years ago, a family friend’s child was involved in a car accident, and one teen was killed at the scene.

Another child, Joseph, was saved because of the competence and skill of the doctors and nurses who rallied around him upon his arrival at the emergency room. The doctors weren’t afraid of assuming responsibility for performing lifesaving procedures. They threw themselves into saving Joseph’s life. Because of their skill and bravery, they succeeded.

If it were true that legions of doctors refused to perform procedures due to fear of responsibility, we would see far less of the lifesaving heroics that happen in our emergency rooms every day.

But let’s talk for a moment about medical malpractice and its associated myths. On average, a slight 6 percent of all doctors are responsible for 60 percent of all medical-malpractice suits, which means that a few bad apples are hurting the whole bunch.

How many of the exceedingly high number of preventable medical errors can be at least partially attributable to the few health-care providers who are being called to account for their mistakes time and again? And might those errors have been avoided by adequate staffing and humane scheduling in their specific work area?

Let’s say that when Joseph arrived in the emergency room, he was greeted by one of those bad apples who had never been called to account for previous harmful errors and who had also been working the last 72 hours straight. An extremely error-prone environment would have been created and might have resulted in Joseph becoming another casualty of preventable medical errors including undiagnosed internal injuries or accidental overdose.

The possibilities for mistakes are endless, and sadly, they happen in the United States every single day.

To improve patient outcomes and increase emergency-care quality, we must remember that our health-care system employs human beings, and we all know that to err is human. We must retain our safety net that is accountability and responsibility.

Setting arbitrary limits on the findings of a jury of our peers weakens that safety net. The courts value people over profits, recognize human error and provide a path by which we can correct those errors. Shielding a broken system only helps that broken system while keeping our families vulnerable to harm.

We can contribute to better outcomes for our fellow Arkansans by upholding accountability for deadly medical errors and by demanding implementation of rigorous safety standards, thereby shifting our entire focus to the prevention of medical errors.

This is the single most effective driver of patient safety. And if the medical community doesn’t create a safer place of treatment, the right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment provides every citizen a path by which he or she may hold a wrongdoer accountable.

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Don R. Elliott Jr. is president of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association.

Editorial, Pages 11 on 02/03/2014