With transcripts of court documents, statements of insurance companies, and reprints of the AMA journal "The Citation."

Written by an MD/JD, this book offers a unique perspective on medical-legal issues surrounding daily clinical practice. It covers all the essentials and tells the inside secrets of how to avoid cases that cost the medical community millions each year. Readers will learn basic law and the ways laws are interpreted. In addition, the book focuses on the law-medicine-politics triangle and its effect on physicians, the impact of — and issues related to — diversity in medical malpractice, and other essential topics. Physicians who better understand malpractice laws are better clinical decision makers who feel more confident in their ability as doctors.

This textbook is about the law of medical malpractice and how to prevent a malpractice lawsuit. It grew out of an earlier book covering medical negligence in Singapore. The book's primary goal is to provide a clear and simple explanation of the American law of medical malpractice, informed consent and risk management. Written with the clinician in mind, it is legally uncomplicated without being overly simplistic. The book is as much about medicine as it is about law; above all, it is about patients. It is written with the fervent belief that with better education, there will emerge a better appreciation of the expectations of the patient — often unmet — and the standards of the legal system — often misunderstood. Fewer lawsuits and improved patient care will hopefully follow.The book is in five sections. The first covers the law of malpractice and informed consent while the second covers risk management with chapters on confidentiality, communication and risk management tips. Section III is a single chapter on reforming the system, and discusses both medical and legal proposals. The subject of tort reforms is covered in this chapter. A review section consisting of 35 multiple choice questions and answers constitutes Section IV. The book concludes with a glossary of legal terms.

Books such as this one are deceptively difficult to create. The general subject is neither happy, nor easy, nor most anyone’s idea of fun. M- practice litigation, however, has become a central fact of existence in the practice of medicine today. This tsunami of lawsuits has led to a high volume of irreconcilable rhetoric and ultimately threatens the stability of the entire health care system. Our goal has been to provide a source of reliable information on a subject of importance to all who provide me- cal care in the United States. The book is divided into four sections. Part I gives an overview of insurance in general and discusses the organization of professional - ability insurance companies in particular. Part II focuses on the litigation process itself with views from the defense and plaintiff bar, and the physician as both expert and defendant. Part III looks at malpractice litigation from the viewpoint of the practicing physician. Some of the chapters are broadly relevant to all doctors—the rise of e-medicine, and the importance of effective communication, for example. The other ch- ters are constructed around individual medical specialties, but discuss issues that are of potential interest to all. Part IV looks ahead. “The Case for Legal Reform” presents changes in medical-legal jurisprudence that can be of immediate benefit. The final two chapters take a broader perspective on aspects of our entire health care system and its interface with law and public policy.

Medical responsibility lawsuits have become a fact of life in every physician’s medical practice. However, there is evidence that physicians are increasingly practising defensive medicine, ordering more tests than may be necessary and avoiding patients with complicated conditions. The modern practice of medicine is increasingly complicated by factors beyond the traditional realm of patient care, including novel technologies, loss of physician autonomy, and economic pressures. A continuing and significant issue affecting physicians and the healthcare system is malpractice. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a major change in the attitude of the public towards the medical profession. People were made aware of the huge advances in medical technology, because health problems increasingly tended to attract media interest and wide publicity. Medicine is a victim of its own success in this respect, and people are now led to expect the latest techniques and perfect outcomes on all occasions. This burst of technology and hyper-specialization in many fields of medicine means that each malpractice claim is transformed into a scientific challenge, requiring specific preparation in analysis and judgment of the clinical case in question. The role of legal medicine becomes more and more peculiar in this judicial setting, often giving rise to erroneous interpretations and hasty scientific verdicts, but guidelines on the methodology of ascertainments and criteria of evaluation are lacking all over the world.The aim of this volume is to clarify the steps required for sequential in-depth analysis of events and consequences of medical actions, in order to verify whether, in the presence of damage, errors or non-observance of rules of conduct by health personnel exist, and which causal values and links of their hypothetical misconduct are involved.​

This monograph is the most comprehensive comparative law study of legal responsibility arising from medical care presently available. It is written for doctors as well as health care administrators and legal professionals. Focusing on the problems of civil liability, it presents the development, points of contact with, and differences between the modern law of medical liability stemming from both the Common Law and Civil Law traditions of England, Scotland, Eire, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa, France, Belgium, West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It demonstrates the extent to which both problems of medical law and trends towards their solution are already familiar in these legal systems. The work describes principles and trends, not by confronting the reader with national reports' and separate chapters on different legal systems; rather, the relevant legal problems are analyzed from an integrative, comparative viewpoint. The main thrust of the presentation is the analysis of numerous court decisions -- the number of which is rising ominously in the United States -- on the civil liability of doctors and hospitals for damages arising from substandard treatment or inadequate disclosure of information to the patient. References to the legal and medical literature, indexes, and a refined system of cross-references, together with an important collection of appendices covering legal and ethical declarations make this work accessible as a handbook and reference work for the legal and social problems encountered today in the wide area of law, ethics, and medicine.

The Preparation and Trial of Medical Malpractice Cases treats a case as a continuous process, from interviewing the client to closing argument. It offers comprehensive coverage of the questions surrounding health maintenance organizations, including case law on the right to sue an HMO as well as its participating physicians. You'll find discussion of: how to recognize a meritorious case; the doctrine of alternative liability; the evidentiary value of FDA approval or non-approval; the continuing treatment doctri≠ state statutes regarding motion practice; malpractice liability of alternative medical practitioners; the admissibility of evidence comparing physicians' risk statistics to those of other physicians; use of expert testimony to establish res ipsa loquitur in negligence; the modified standard of proximate cause when a physician's negligence exacerbates a patient's existing condition; violation of the duty to disclose information; contributory negligence in informed consent; distinguishing between medical malpractice and ordinary negligence; liability of nurses; and more. Appendices demonstrate how to analyze a medical brief, depose and examine the defendant physician, and elicit testimony from your own expert witness. Also included are a sample Bill of Particulars, a sample jury charge and a list of Web sites to assist your medical research.