Scientific Analysis for Medical Liability Claims
AAOSNow – December 2018
by Michael Marks, MD
In orthopaedics, as in much of medicine, improvements in patient care are achieved when processes are developed to analyze outcomes. Medical professional liability (MPL) claims can serve as lagging indicators or signals of serious problems in the delivery of care. Medical liability insurer Coverys thoroughly analyzes MPL cases; the resulting data then serve as a critical guide to the vulnerabilities permeating health care.
Recently, I spoke with Coverys’ Robert Hanscom, vice president of business analytics, and Lisa Simm, manager of risk management, to learn how the insurer is helping healthcare providers decrease their risks with medical malpractice.
According to Mr. Hanscom and Ms. Simm, “The MPL industry is not content to simply report on claims trends and then throw a smattering of risk-management content at various topics; rather, they are positioning the data to be relevant and actionable.”
They do admit, however, that MPL data have limitations, the most formidable of which are: