Abstract:
There is now agreement that around 10 per cent of all hospital admissions to acute
care hospitals give rise to preventable adverse events. These high levels of injury
throw into sharp relief the unfairness of the tort based system of compensation for
medically related injury where a relativcly small number of plaintiffs recover
compensation. These high levels of injury also highlight the relative
ineffectiveness of tort law in improving levels of safety by deterring unsafe
conduct. This article argues that in the field of medically related injury tort 1aw is
not a good model for providing compensation to patients who sustain injuries
associated with medical error. In this field tort law does not and cannot
accommodate regulatory initiatives that are designcd to improve levels of patient
safety. While tort law focuses on particular instanccs of fault these regulatory
initiatives adopt a systemic approach to improving safety. Against this
background this article then argues for an experimental and localised approach to
developing systems of compensation for injurics associated with medical error.
This approach is based on the principle that compensation should be integrated
into particular regulatory initiatives that are dcsigned to improve patient safety by
reducing the levels of particular classes of preventable adverse events.
