Greenberg Michael D, Haviland Amelia M, Ashwood J Scott, Main Regan
Rand Health Q. 2011 Mar 1;1(1):1. eCollection 2011 Spring.
In principle, efforts to improve patient safety, if they are successful, should lead to reductions in claims of medical malpractice. In practice, however, this has not yet been systematically demonstrated to be so. The authors examined the relationship between safety outcomes in hospitals and malpractice claiming against providers, using administrative data and measures for California from 2001 to 2005. They found that decreases in the county-level frequency of adverse safety outcomes were positively and significantly associated with decreases in the volume of malpractice claims, as captured by records from four of the largest malpractice insurers in the state. This result suggests that policy options that improve patient safety may offer a new avenue for reducing malpractice pressure on physicians, at the same time that they improve clinical outcomes.
原则上，如果改善患者安全的努力取得成功，应该会减少医疗事故索赔。然而，在实践中，这一点尚未得到系统的证实。作者利用2001年至2005年加利福尼亚州的行政数据和指标，研究了医院安全结果与针对医疗服务提供者的医疗事故索赔之间的关系。他们发现，县级不良安全结果发生率的下降与医疗事故索赔数量的减少呈正相关且具有显著相关性，这一索赔数量减少是由该州四家最大的医疗事故保险公司的记录所体现的。这一结果表明，改善患者安全的政策选择可能为减轻医生面临的医疗事故压力提供一条新途径，同时还能改善临床结果。
