Humanness in Med-Mal (Continued)

Last week I posted about a grant from the Obama Administration to support “judge-directed negotiations” in medical practice litigation in New York. The purpose of the grant was to build on the success of Judge Douglas McKeon, who has been using mediation techniques in med-mal cases involving NYC hospitals. Jeff Thompson at ADRHub has now posted about a recent article in the WSJ (subscription required) reporting on the program the grant will support. Here are the introductory paragraphs from the Journal article:

To cut medical-malpractice costs, five New York City hospitals have agreed to a pilot program to divulge medical mistakes early, offer settlements quickly and use special state “health courts,” where judges will help negotiate agreements before cases go to trial.

The program, funded for three years with $3 million from the federal government, aims to cut the $1.4 billion spent annually in New York State on medical-malpractice premiums, hospital and state officials say. It is one of several programs being funded by the federal government to encourage hospitals to acknowledge and reduce medical errors.

Needless to say, judges “help negotiate agreements before cases go to trial” all the time. It’s called a settlement conference. While the Journal article refers to what Judge McKeon does as mediation, settlement conferences are really a form of mixed process, since the neutral has decisonmaking power. They are problematic for all the reasons that mixed processes are problematic. For this program to add something new and valuable, it will have to involve more than the usual settlement conference. Ideally, it would involve trained neutrals who are not the presiding judges in the cases under consideration.

2 thoughts on “Humanness in Med-Mal (Continued)”

  1. It’s always strange when companies redesign their product packaging to make it look like the product has changed. This is essentially what NY is trying to do with medical malpractice, isn’t it?

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