By NextBestFitNo-fault compensation for medical injury
Injured patients are compensated without suing, from a fund; discipline is handled separately.
Faster compensation, less defensive medicine.
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This path
No-fault compensation for medical injury
Concrete changes if chosen
What would actually have to change in law, agencies, payment rules, or systems.
- Create a no-fault injury compensation fund
- Replace most malpractice lawsuits
- Separate discipline from compensation
Effects
Each effect has its own page: the evidence, the case that it is or isn't a real cost, and whom it affects.
What it fixes
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine
Compensating injured patients from a fund without requiring a lawsuit provides faster, fairer compensation and reduces defensive medicine, with discipline handled separately.
- Low-value care and overtreatment
Compensating injured patients without lawsuits reduces defensive medicine.
What it creates or worsens
- Limits compensation for people who are harmed
Compensation without lawsuits provides smaller payouts for severe injuries.
- Reduces income or business for affected groups
Compensation through a fund instead of lawsuits leaves lawyers with fewer cases.
Who's affected
Who gains
- People with ongoing or specialist care needs
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine: Most patients injured by care never receive compensation.
- Low-value care and overtreatment: Low-benefit tests and treatments expose them to harm.
- Doctors, nurses, and other clinicians
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine: Liability brings insurance premiums and stress.
- Health insurers, brokers, and their shareholders
- Low-value care and overtreatment: They pay for tests and treatments with little benefit.
- Taxpayers and public budgets
- Low-value care and overtreatment: They pay for tests and treatments with little benefit.
Who loses
- Malpractice insurers and attorneys
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine: The liability system generates insurance and legal business.
- Hospitals, clinics, and care organizations
- Low-value care and overtreatment: Per-service payments reward additional low-value care.
- Drug and device makers
- Low-value care and overtreatment: They sell devices and tests used in low-value care.
Where it has been tried
- New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark: No-fault injury compensation.
- New Zealand: New Zealand's ACC accepted 15,411 treatment-injury claims lodged in 2022–2023, according to decisions recorded by March 2024.