Philadelphia Personal Injury Attorney Blog | Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP

In implementing the 2005 Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005, which was supported by the American Medical Association (AMA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has proposed rules that would allow doctors to report mistakes and near-mistakes in medical procedures to what are known as Patient Safety Organization (PSOs). The goal of the PSOs would be to reduce medical malpractice by collecting errors and allowing the medical community to look at them to determine whatever trends might be evident from the data.

The hope of the AMA is that this legislation will "transform the current culture of blame and punishment into one of open communication and prevention." Although this legislation may do much in terms of preventing common procedural errors and preventing the sharing of common mistakes, the law is still far short of what is necessary to protect patients from doctors with a personal record of dangerous errors or sloppy practices. In order to do this, doctors who have settled or received a verdict against them in a medical malpractice trial should be forced to report their records in a way that would allow patients to pick their doctors armed with knowledge. This is, in fact, the only way a patient might be said to have given "informed consent" in any real sense of the term.

This sort of openness, one that has been fought by the AMA for years, is actually being practiced in Canada. Beginning June 1, 2009, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario will post malpractice judgments and settlements by all doctors under its purview. The doctors will have to report the judgments or settlements as a condition of renewing their license.

Until the AMA is prepared to show this level of openness, it is hard to believe that they truly have the patient's best interests at heart.

If you or a loved one has suffered as a result of the negligence or errors of a doctor, contact the medical malpractice attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger, & Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation.