By NextBestFitSafe harbor for following clinical guidelines
Clinicians who follow recognized guidelines are protected from liability.
Draft decision:RejectedConfidence: medium · not yet reviewed
No-fault chosen instead.
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This path
Safe harbor for following clinical guidelines
Concrete changes if chosen
What would actually have to change in law, agencies, payment rules, or systems.
- Protect clinicians who follow recognized guidelines from liability
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
Protecting clinicians from liability when they follow recognized guidelines reduces defensive medicine and encourages guideline use.
What it creates or worsens
- Limits choice or applies one rule to every setting
Liability protection relies on following recognized guidelines, which may not fit every patient.
- Limits compensation for people who are harmed
Protecting clinicians who follow guidelines removes a route to compensation for patients harmed by that care.
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.
- Doctors, nurses, and other clinicians
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine: Liability brings insurance premiums and stress.
Who loses
- Malpractice insurers and attorneys
- Malpractice system: slow, costly, and drives defensive medicine: The liability system generates insurance and legal business.
- People with ongoing or specialist care needs
- Limits choice or applies one rule to every setting: Liability protection relies on following recognized guidelines, which may not fit every patient.
Other ways to soften the losses
- Pair with a no-fault fund
Where it has been tried
- U.S. proposals: Tested in some states; limited evidence.
- Maine, United States: GAO’s 1993 report states that Maine guidelines for 20 conditions and procedures in four specialties acquired the force and effect of state law on January 1, 1992, for the participating-physician liability demonstration.