Recently, a defense attorney hosted Malpractice 101 on the physician social networking site, sermo.com. A multitude of questions were answered.
Sprinkled in the answers was the conclusion the tort system has a number of salutary effects – namely patient safety. The moderator recited the (now stale) observation from the 1980’s. To paraphrase: Anesthesiologists embraced pulse oximetry because their med mal premiums were too high. They identified the source of high premiums – anoxic injuries and deaths, and crafted a solution. Pulse oximetry. Once embraced, their ORs became safer, and premiums went down.
While I will not quibble that pulse oximetry is a good thing, (it is), I would argue it was a basic innovation that was embraced by the profession, irrespective of premium cost. Here’s why.