Malpractice varies in Japan and U.S.

Cyrus Dugger

Malpractice varies in Japan and U.S.

An interesting article....

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Japanese malpractice cases are criminal acts, compared to U.S. cases handled civilly, but both sides might learn from each other.
So concludes Robert Leflar, a law professor at the University of Arkansas who spent a year at the University of Tokyo School of Law.
Leflar said that the Japanese healthcare industry has weak or non-existent accountability mechanisms that are common in the American system.
Because Japanese peer review and professional discipline structures are weak and there is no mandatory hospital accreditation or objective, hospital-by-hospital statistics on medical treatment outcomes, injured patients go to the police for redress.
To handle these complaints, Japanese prosecutors have legal weapons not available stateside, such as the "professional negligence causing death and injury" charge -- a crime that is not on U.S. statute books -- and sanctions against altering medical records to cover mistakes.
Japanese physicians also pool their medical liability insurance, which has standard rates that do not vary by specialty or geographic location.
"American reformers seeking to link patient safety and improvement of the medico-legal dispute-resolution system may find the Japanese approach instructive," Leflar said.
He added that Japan is trying to set up independent groups of medical specialists to investigate medical accidents more accurately and less expensively than how mishaps are currently handled in the legal system.
Leflar will present his research in Shanghai on Dec. 14 at an international symposium on health issues sponsored by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. (link)

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Posted at 10:14 AM, Dec 06, 2006 in
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Since so many people argue for adoption of "loser pays" because it's the law of the land in England, should we argue to criminalize malpractice since it's the law of the land in Japan?

Justinian just can't seem to honestly engage his opponents. No one argues that "loser pays should be adopted because England does it." The argument is that loser-pays is a superior system in terms of fairness and incentives, and the scare-tactics of the Justinian Lanes of the world claiming that loser-pays prevents people from vindicating legitimate rights is refuted by the fact that England (and Canada and the rest of the Western world) has loser-pays, yet doesn't suffer from the litany of horrors that the litigation lobby claims would occur if loser-pays were implemented here.

Sigh.

I think I know what the problem is. There needs to be an html tag for sarcasm. Is this better?

The rest of the Western world has things like Parliaments and Prime Ministers, proportional representation, 50% tax rates, strict gun control, and universal healthcare. Should we adopt those too?

Or to stay on topic, what are your thoughts about criminalizing malpractice? Would it reduce malpractice? What if we criminalized it and eliminated medical malpractice torts? My initial feeling is that criminalizing malpractice is a bad idea, and I'd love to know how you feel about the idea.

Lol, my sarcasm tags didn't work. It was supposed to read:

[sarcasm]The rest of the Western world has things like Parliaments and Prime Ministers, proportional representation, 50% tax rates, strict gun control, and universal healthcare. Should we adopt those too?[/sarcasm]